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2007-9-3 23:17:30 |
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Editor's note: We do not know how the researchers came to find this inverse association. This is not a controlled study; all findings are subject to errors and biases introduced into the statistic analysis. Consumers should not find any comfort in this study as obesity kills some 300,000 people a year in the U.S. Obese patients hospitalized with heart failure are less likely to die in hospital than those who are skinny, but with the same type of heart failure, according to a new study, which appears in the January issue of the American Heart Journal. Dr. Gregg Fonarow of the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues found that those who are very obese with body mass index over 60 were more than twice less likely to die from heart failure during hospitalization than those who were very skinny having a BMI 16 or lower. Earlier studies on chronic systolic heart failure show that BMI is inversely associated with mortality and the current study wanted to determine if such an association holds for acute decompensated heart failure, according to the researchers. In the study, researchers examined data from almost 109,000 heart failure episodes in more than 80,000 patients in 263 hospitals in the United States from October 2001 through December 2004. They found that the higher the BMI of the patient, the lower the death risk. An increase in BMI by 5 units was linked to a 10 percent reduction of the death risk. The researchers found that obese patients with highest BMI tended to be younger, more likely to have diabetes and left ventricular ejection fraction. This indicates that the heart was able to pump more blood out with each contraction than those who were skinny. The inverse association between the risk of death from acute decompensated heart failure and BMI was still significant even after other risk factors including age, gender, blood pressure, and heart rate were considered. The finding indicates that nutritional/metabolic support may have therapeutic benefit in specific patients hospitalized for heart failure, Reuters cited Fonarow as saying. Source: American Heart Journal, Volume 153, Issue 1, Pages 74-81 (January 2007) An obesity paradox in acute heart failure: Analysis of body mass index and in hospital mortality for 108927 patients in the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, Preethi Srikanthan, MD, Maria Rosa Costanzo, MD, Guillermo B. Cintron, MD, Margarita Lopatin, MS. |
