Weight Associated with Diabetes Risk Differs by Ethnicity

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Black and Asian adults may be at risk for developing diabetes at a lower weight than whites, according to a new study.

Based on the findings, researchers suggest the definition of obesity should be different for different populations, in order to trigger diabetes interventions in a timely manner.

Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of weight in relation to height used to assess health risks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines overweight as a BMI of 25 to 29.9 and obesity as a BMI of 30 and above.

However, those cutoffs are primarily applicable to white people, which has been noted by the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Naveed Sattar told Reuters Health.

“But few people really recognize this,” he said. Institutions like the WHO and CDC have yet to adopt ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for overweight and obesity.

Read full article


Article Credit
“Weight Associated with Diabetes Risk Differs by Ethnicity”
By Kathryn Doyle
Reuters. 10 July 2014.