Research: Obesity increases the risk of serious infections

Koronapandemian during it was discovered that obesity predisposes to a severe form of the disease. It prompted researchers to investigate whether obesity increases the risk of serious infection in other diseases as well.

The result of a recent study is that obesity significantly increases the risk of being hospitalized or dying from common infections. In addition to the corona disease, these include, for example, influenza, pneumonia, gastroenteritis and urinary tract infections.

For example, the risk of severe influenza turned out to be more than threefold if body mass index was over 40. The risk was compared to the risk of people of normal weight. In general, the study showed that the higher the body mass index, the greater the risk of severe infection.

If the body mass index was over 30, the subjects had a 70 percent higher risk of being hospitalized or dying from any infectious disease compared to normal weight subjects with a body mass index of 18.5–24.9.

“One the likely explanation is a weakening of the immune system, a type of obesity-related immune deficiency, says the study leader Mika Kivimäki.

Kivimäki is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Helsinki and University College London.

“Obesity had a particularly clear connection with infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue, such as rosacea and fold eczema. In them, the risk associated with obesity is 2.8 times when compared to normal weight,” says Kivimäki.

During the corona pandemic, morbidly obese people with a body mass index over 40 were classified as one as a risk group. “Our results support this line,” says Kivimäki.

Researchers analyzed 925 different infectious diseases science journal In a study published in the Lancet.

The connection was similar for infections caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi, he says Solja Nyberg from the University of Helsinki and the Institute of Occupational Health in the bulletin. He is one of the main authors of the study.

Exceptions in the study were HIV and tuberculosis. Obesity did not increase the risk of severe form of these diseases.

Fatness is well known as a risk factor for diabetes and several other chronic diseases.

From the research data, obesity emerged as an independent risk factor in connection with serious infections. The risk was not explained by metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, asthma or COPD, or even cancer.

The risk remained even when social status or lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and exercise were taken into account.

According to Kivimäki, so-called healthy obesity does not protect against serious infections. The term refers to obesity that is not associated with metabolic disorders, such as elevated cholesterol levels, sugar metabolism disorders, or hypertension.

On the other hand, those who lost weight from obese to overweight or normal weight had 20 percent fewer serious infections than those who remained obese.

Research was based on Finnish and British material. Participants were followed through national registries for an average of 13–14 years. There were a total of 540,000 of them.

Was also in use global survey dataaccording to which 5.4 million people will die from infectious diseases in 2023. Of the deaths, 0.6 million were related to obesity.

In Finland, obesity was related to approximately 19 percent of infection deaths, in other Nordic countries to 11–13 percent. Finland has risen In statistics describing the obesity of European populations to the top positions quickly, in a good decade.