Estimates of Obesity-attributable Mortality in the United States
Author: Lingyi Lu
Publisher:
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe increasing prevalence of obesity over the past decades has generated considerable concern about health problems and subsequent economic burden. Approximately 64% of U.S. adults are estimated to be overweight or obese. Over 30% are obese and 5% are extremely obese among them. Obesity has been associated with a variety of chronic diseases and with increased risk of all-cause mortality. The number of annual deaths in the U.S. attributable to obesity estimated from epidemiological cohorts ranges widely from 26,917 to 385,000. The objective of the current study is to estimate a more accurate number of excess deaths attributable to obesity. A sub-sample of 6,913 subjects from the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I, 197 1-1975) data set and corresponding mortality information from the National Health and Nutrition examination Survey I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (NHEFS,1992) was employed for building a Cox's proportional hazards model. The number (2,374,029) of total deaths age from 25 and older in the U.S. came from the National Center for Health Statistics 2003 National Vital Statistics Report. Body weight was categorized based upon body mass index (BMI) which is defined as Weight (kg) / Height2 (m2). "Underweight" was defined as BMI 18.5; "Normal weight" was defined as 18.5 BMI