Sustained weight loss may delay cardiometabolic disease onset
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Sustained weight loss was associated with delayed cardiometabolic disease onset, especially among individuals with greater weight-loss magnitude, according to study results published in The American Journal of Cardiology.
“Modest weight loss of at least 5% is clinically beneficial and recommended by clinical treatment guidelines, which can be achieved with various clinical and behavioral treatment options,” Lisa Bailey-Davis, DEd, RD, associate professor of population health sciences at Geisinger Health, Danville, Pennsylvania, and colleagues wrote. “However, long-term weight-loss maintenance remains challenging owing to the biology of obesity; hence, weight regain is common; about 80% of the weight loss is regained within 5 years.”
The retrospective cohort study included 63,567 adults who received primary care at Geisinger Health System from 2001 to 2017 using electronic health records. Patients with three or more weight measurements during a 2-year period were identified and categorized as the following:
- obesity maintainers (BMI 30 kg/m2 or more) who maintained their weight within 3% from baseline;
- weight-loss rebounders who had obesity at baseline, lost 5% or body weight in the first year and regained 20% or more of weight loss by the end of year 2; and
- weight-loss maintainers who had obesity at baseline, lost 5% or more body weight in the first year and maintained 80% or more of their weight loss by the end of year 2.
Researchers determined incident type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and time-to-outcome among each group and among each weight-loss category.
After a mean follow-up period of 6.6 years, 67% of patients were obesity maintainers (n = 42,534; mean age, 53 years), 19% were weight-loss rebounders (n = 12,227; mean age, 48 years) and 14% were weight-loss maintainers (n = 8,806; mean age, 50 years). Time to development of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia was longer among those in the weight-loss maintainer group and shorter among those in the obesity maintainer group (P < .0001).
Incidence of type 2 diabetes (adjusted HR = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.61-0.74; P < .0001), hypertension (aHR = 0.72; 95% CI, 0.65-0.79; P < .0001) and hyperlipidemia (aHR = 0.86; 95% CI, 0.8-0.92; P < .0001) were lower in patients in the weight-loss maintainer group compared with those in the obesity maintainer group. Those in the weight-loss maintainer group with weight loss of more than 15% demonstrated longer time to developing any of these outcomes compared with patients who lost less than 7% body weight (P < .0001).
“This study joins the growing body of research illustrating the important role of the electronic medical record in outcomes research in various disease states,” the researchers wrote. “This research demonstrates that sustained weight loss is associated with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia; it is also associated with a longer time until onset.”
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts