The wider the waist, the higher the death risk

FOR middle-aged and older adults, wider waist may raise death risk later in life, US researchers have found.

Wider waist increases chances of heart trouble, cancer, respiratory disease, said researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) in Atlanta.

What's more, having a normal weight does not, in fact, protect against such risk if you carry any excess weight in your abdominal region, according to the researchers.

The association appears to apply to both men and women, the researchers noted.

The findings were based on analysis of data concerning about 48, 500 men and 56,000 women who had participated in a large national cancer study.

All of the patients were aged 50 or older, with an average age of between 67 and 69. The study noted that between 1992 and 1993, all had completed health questionnaires concerning their medical histories, while weight and waist size statistics were gathered in 1997.

Deaths among the participants were tracked up until the end of 2006. By that point, about 9,300 men and 5,300 women had passed away. Irrespective of body mass index (BMI), the researchers found that having a large waist did indeed appear to be associated with having a higher risk for death.

The researchers say that men who had a waist size of 47 inches or more bore about a twofold higher risk for death compared to men with the lowest waist size, they noted. The same increased risk was observed among women with a waist size of 42 inches or more.

The higher risk linked to greater waist size held whether or not men and women were of normal overall weight, overweight or obese, the researchers noted.

However, women of normal weight who nonetheless carried excess weight in their waist area appeared to be most vulnerable to the large waist-death risk association, according to the study.

"A larger waist size was found to be linked to a higher risk for dying from cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer at every measure of body mass index," noted study author Eric J Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the ACS.

The findings were published in the August issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Xinhua