Cardiometabolic risk factors among 1.3 million adults with overweight or obesity, but not diabetes, in 10 geographically diverse regions of the United States, 2012-2013
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INTRODUCTION: Various phenotypes of overweight and obesity pose various health risks. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of 4 commonly measured cardiometabolic risk factors (CRFs) among adults with overweight or obesity, but not diabetes, at the time of the study. METHODS: 5.7%-6.4% or ICD-9-CM 790.2x). We tested the risk of having 1 or more CRFs after adjusting for obesity class and demographic characteristics with multivariable logistic regression. RESULTS: Among participants with overweight (52.5% of the sample), 18.6% had none of the 4 CRFs. Among the 47.5% of participants with obesity, 9.6% had none; among participants with morbid obesity, 5.8% had none. Age was strongly associated with CRFs in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSION: Almost 10% of participants with obesity had no CRFs. Overweight or obesity increases cardiometabolic risk, but the number and type of CRFs varied substantially by age, even among participants with morbid obesity.
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Recent results from RCTs and cohort studies have demonstrated that overweight and obesity should be treated as a disease, even in the absence of type 2 diabetes, as excessive weight profoundly increases cardiometabolic and cancer risk, along with increased mortality.
“Recent results from RCTs and cohort studies have clearly demonstrated that we should treat overweight and obesity as a disease, even in the absence of type 2 diabetes, as excessive weight profoundly increases cardiometabolic and cancer risk, along with increased mortality (Nichols et al, 2017;Powell-Wiley et al, 2021;Larsson et al, 2022;Lincoff et al, 2023;Tan et al, 2024).”
From Emerging pharmacotherapies for obesity: A systematic review (2025) · cites this paper as Nichols et al, 2017
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- Authors
- Nichols, G. A., Horberg, M., Koebnick, C., Young, D. R., Waitzfelder, B., Sherwood, N. E., Daley, M. F., & Ferrara, A.
- Affiliations
- Kaiser Permanente (US)
- HealthPartners (US)
- Corresponding author
- Nichols, Gregory A.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Preventing Chronic Disease
- Published
- 2017-03-09
- Volume
- 14
- Pages
- E22-E22
- ISSN
- 1545-1151 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5345964
- OpenAlex
- W2592500018
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 3
- FWCI
- 2.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- Locations
- Preventing Chronic Disease (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (P30DK092924)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes, Cardiovascular Risks, and Lipoproteins
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Pharmacy › Obesity and Health Practices
- Keywords
- cardiometabolic risk factors, overweight, obesity, morbid obesity, obesity phenotypes, prevalence, age differences, adults without diabetes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Cardiovascular Diseases, Female, Health Surveys, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Risk Factors, United States, Cohort Studies, Odds Ratio, Overweight, Young Adult
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