Why overweight people may be more likely to die from infections like pneumonia and sepsis

[Gert van der Hoek]

We may be vastly underestimating obesity’s toll.


Nov 29, 2017

As obesity rates have hit global epidemic proportions, researchers are finding new ways that excess body fat harms our health. This week, a new study adds another worry to the list: Being overweight or obese in adolescence seems to put people at a higher risk of dying from infectious diseases by middle age.

In a first-of-its-kind paper, published in the International Journal of Obesity, researchers from the Israel Defense Forces gathered data on 2.3 million people and found that even a few extra pounds early on in life was associated with an increased risk of death from infectious diseases — such as sepsis or pneumonia — before the age of 60.

“There’s been an increase in both the US and Europe of infectious diseases deaths among young and middle age adults,” said lead study author Gilad Twig, a physician from the Israel Defense Forces and professor at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv. In the US, for example, researchers have found a 0.5 percent annual increase in the rate of deaths attributed to common infectious diseases among middle-aged women over the past two decades.

Now Twig and his colleagues think part of that trend may be explained by the rise in obesity.

Obese women were at a sevenfold higher risk for infectious diseases death compared to normal-weight women, while obese men were at a 2.3-fold higher risk of infectious diseases death compared to normal-weight men.

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