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(Circulation. 2008;117:1624-1626.)
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Expanding Evidence for the Multiple Dangers of Epidemic Abdominal Obesity

Adrian J. Cameron, MPH; Paul Z. Zimmet, MD, PhD, FRACP, FRCP

From the International Diabetes Institute and Baker Heart Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.

Correspondence to Paul Zimmet, AO, MD, PhD, FRACP, FRCP, FTSE, Director International Diabetes Institute, 250 Kooyong Rd, Caulfield VIC 3162, Australia. E-mail pzimmet@idi.org.au

Key Words: Editorials • mortality • obesity

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

The waistline of America has been expanding now for decades,¹ largely as a consequence of an obesogenic environment, with a car-worshipping culture and take-away lifestyle par excellence.² No upper limit to the prevalence or extent of obesity is yet apparent, and many countries and communities worldwide are busily following the American lead. Accumulating research evidence suggests that the personal and economic costs of the obesity epidemic are immense,³ driven by the obesity-related increases in risk for conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, the metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease (CVD), kidney disease, arthritis, cancer, asthma, and sleep-disordered breathing. In addition, decreases are apparent in self-esteem and quality of life.

Article p 1658

Numerous very large cohort studies have also firmly established obesity as being a strong and robust predictor of both overall and CVD mortality in men and women.^4–8 In most of the studies reported to date, waist circumference was not measured, with obesity measured using the body mass index (BMI), a crude measure of overall obesity that, as multiple studies have now shown, is often not the best predictor of obesity-related outcomes.^9–11 In the current issue of Circulation, Zhang et al expand on the already considerable evidence suggestive of a strong positive relationship between overall obesity (using BMI) and mortality with a report from the large Nurses’ Health Study examining the impact of abdominal obesity (using waist circumference) on all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality in US women.¹² The study is well powered to examine such associations, with over 3500 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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