Adults who lose weight at any age can gain long-term health benefits, researchers say today.
Currently, about one billion people globally are overweight and more than 300 million obese, say Professor John Deanfield, of University College London, UK, and colleagues in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
"Excess body fat is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension in adulthood," they warn, "and accumulating evidence shows that these risks adversely affect progression of arterial disease."
Although weight loss cuts risk of heart disease, most people become overweight again in the long-term. So the team looked at the impact of a person’s weight over their lifetime. They used figures on 1,273 of the participants in the 1946 British birth cohort study who are still alive and attended a clinic assessment aged 60 to 64 years.
This showed that being overweight or obese was linked to the thickness of the carotid artery. It was also linked to raised blood pressure.
Both of these two measures, plus leptin (a hormone that regulates fat storage), rates of diabetes, and reduced adiponectin (a protein that regulates glucose) were linked to the duration of overweight during adulthood. Being overweight in childhood seemed to have little impact.
"Individuals who dropped a body mass index category in adulthood had lower carotid intima media thickness and leptin concentrations, even when this change was not maintained," write the authors.
"Weight loss, at any age in adulthood, is worthwhile because it might result in long-term cardiovascular benefit."
The findings were welcomed by the British Heart Foundation, which backed the study.
Victoria Taylor, from the foundation, said: “This study reinforces how maintaining a healthy weight throughout life helps us to reduce our chances of developing cardiovascular disease as we get older."
Charakida, M. et al. Lifelong patterns of BMI and cardiovascular phenotype in individuals aged 60-64 years in the 1946 British birth cohort study: an epidemiological study. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 21 May 2014 doi: 10.1016/, S2213-8587(14)70103-2 [abstract]
Leave a Reply