[Correspondence] Determining the worldwide prevalence of obesity

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration study (Dec 16, 2017, p 2627)1 is a landmark description of the progress of the obesity pandemic, but substantially underestimates the scale of the problem. The study1 defined obesity using body-mass index (BMI) in adults and BMI-for-age in children and adolescents. Systematic reviews2 –4 of a large amount of high-quality and consistent evidence show that the use of BMI to define obesity (the degree of excess body fat) is highly specific, but has low to moderate sensitivity.

Source: LANCET - May 4, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: John J Reilly, Asmaa El-Hamdouchi, Adama Diouf, Andries Monyeki, Serge A Somda Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research