BMI alone misses obesity diagnoses, international study finds

Detailed summary

A study of more than 844,000 people across four countries found that relying on body mass index (BMI) alone can both overestimate and underestimate obesity, potentially exposing patients to inappropriate treatment.

Obesity diagnosis should move beyond a uniform BMI-based definition, researchers say, after analysing health data from 844,108 adults across China, the UK, the United States and Spain.The findings, published in Nature on Wednesday, suggest that current methods of diagnosing obesity may fail to distinguish between people who are already experiencing health problems linked to excess body fat and those who face increased health risks but have no evidence of impaired organ function.“People with obesity, like everyone else, deserve care matched to their needs: no less, and no more,” Professor Francesco Rubino, senior author of the study and chair of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery at King's…

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