Mortality and Optimal Body Mass Index in a Sample of the US Population

In this paper, the authors model the nonmonotonic relation between body mass index (BMI) (weight (kg)/height2 (m2)) and mortality in 13,242 black and white participants in the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study in order to estimate the BMI at which minimum mortality occurs. The BMI of minimum mo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of epidemiology 1998-04, Vol.147 (8), p.739-749
Main Authors: Durazo-Arvizu, Ramón A., McGee, Daniel L., Cooper, Richard S., Liao, Youlian, Luke, Amy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Black or African American
Black People
Body Mass Index
Epidemiologic Methods
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Logistic Models
Male
Medical sciences
Metabolic diseases
Middle Aged
Mortality
Nutrition Surveys
Obesity
Smoking - adverse effects
United States
White People
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Summary:In this paper, the authors model the nonmonotonic relation between body mass index (BMI) (weight (kg)/height2 (m2)) and mortality in 13,242 black and white participants in the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study in order to estimate the BMI at which minimum mortality occurs. The BMI of minimum mortality was 27.1 for black men (95% confidence interval (Cl) 24.8–29.4), 26.8 for black women (95% CI 24.7–28.9), 24.8 for white men (95% CI 23.8–25.9), and 24.3 for white women (95% Cl 23.3–25.4). Each confidence interval included the group average. Analyses conducted by smoking status and after exclusion of persons with baseline illness and persons who died during the first 4 years of follow-up led to virtually identical estimates. The authors determined the range of values over which risk of all-cause mortality would increase no more than 20% in comparison with the minimum. This interval was nine BMI units wide, and it included 70% of the population. These results were confirmed by parallel analyses using quantiles. The model used allowed the estimation of parameters in the BMI-mortality relation. The resulting empirical findings from each of four race/sex groups, which are representative of the US population, demonstrate a wide range of BMIs consistent with minimum mortality and do not suggest that the optimal BMI is at the lower end of the distribution for any subgroup. Am J Epidemiol 1998;147:739–49.
ISSN:0002-9262
1476-6256
DOI:10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009518