Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-15-2016
Abstract
CONTEXT: Recent analyses of epidemiological data including the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) have suggested that the harmful effects of obesity may have decreased over calendar time. The shifting BMI distribution over time coupled with the application of fixed broad BMI categories in these analyses could be a plausible "nuisance contributor" to this observed change in the obesity-associated mortality over calendar time.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the extent to which observed temporal changes in the obesity-mortality association may be due to a shifting population distribution for body mass index (BMI), coupled with analyses based on static, broad BMI categories.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Simulations were conducted using data from NHANES I and III linked with mortality data. Data from NHANES I were used to fit a "true" model treating BMI as a continuous variable. Coefficients estimated from this model were used to simulate mortality for participants in NHANES III. Hence, the population-level association between BMI and mortality in NHANES III was fixed to be identical to the association estimated in NHANES I. Hazard ratios (HRs) for obesity categories based on BMI for NHANES III with simulated mortality data were compared to the corresponding estimated HRs from NHANES I.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Change in hazard ratios for simulated data in NHANES III compared to observed estimates from NHANES I.
RESULTS: On average, hazard ratios for NHANES III based on simulated mortality data were 29.3% lower than the estimates from NHANES I using observed mortality follow-up. This reduction accounted for roughly three-fourths of the apparent decrease in the obesity-mortality association observed in a previous analysis of these data.
CONCLUSIONS: Some of the apparent diminution of the association between obesity and mortality may be an artifact of treating BMI as a categorical variable.
Recommended Citation
Mehta, Tapan; Pajewski, Nicholas m.; Keith, Scott W.; Fontaine, Kevin; and Allison, David B., "Role of a plausible nuisance contributor in the declining obesity-mortality risks over time." (2016). Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Faculty Papers. Paper 93.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/petfp/93
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
PubMed ID
27649888
Language
English
Comments
This article has been peer reviewed. It is the authors' final version prior to publication in Experimental Gerontology, Volume 86, December 2016, Pages 14-21.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2016.09.015 Copyright © Elsevier