Not all obesity means ill-health, study suggests |
| A study suggests that people are being misdiagnosed as having obesity with the metric known as the body mass index (BMI), and that only between a quarter and a third of people currently diagnosed as such should be considered as in poor health. The study, which uses data from almost 850,000 adults from China, Britain, the US and Spain, comes in the wake of a proposal last year from experts and medical organisations to move obesity diagnosis beyond just BMI, which is based on a person’s weight and height, to include body fat and broader health. Francesco Rubino, professor and chair of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King’s College London, and the study’s senior author, said the inaccuracy of BMI measurements was well-known. "But we haven't so far got a better system," he said. The new proposed framework aims to "provide a meaningful clinical characterisation of obesity that can inform care and policy." |
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