Hello. I'm Dr Arefa Cassoobhoy, a practicing internist, Medscape advisor, and senior medical director for WebMD. Welcome to Morning Report, our 1-minute news story for primary care.
The controversial concept of "metabolically healthy obesity" has been around for a while. It's the idea that people can carry extra weight without having high blood pressure, glucose intolerance, or high cholesterol—the signs of metabolic syndrome.
A new study of more than 6800 individuals questions that assumption. It found that metabolically healthy obesity at baseline did not predict a person's future risk for cardiovascular morbidity or mortality. Almost half of the metabolically healthy obese patients eventually developed metabolic syndrome, raising their cardiovascular risk. And the longer a person was metabolically unhealthy, the higher the risk.
What can we take from this? Early identification of this group is an opportunity for primary prevention. The research is a reminder that we can't assume that our metabolically healthy obese patients will remain that way. Obesity is a risk factor for developing metabolic syndrome.
Follow Dr Cassoobhoy on Twitter at @ArefaMD
Medscape Internal Medicine © 2018 WebMD, LLC
Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this: Can Obesity Ever Be Healthy? - Medscape - May 18, 2018.
Comments