The Unexpected Benefits of Obesity
Scientists told about the benefits of excess weight
Overweight patients who are hospitalized with an infectious disease are twice as likely to survive as people who are not obese. This conclusion was reached by Danish scientists led by Dr. Sigrid Gribsholt from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at the hospital at Aarhus University. This is reported by The Independent (Obese patients twice as likely to survive after being admitted to hospital with infection).
For the study, the results of which were presented at the European Congress on Obesity in In Vienna, doctors studied the data of more than 18 thousand Danes hospitalized for urgent medical or surgical procedures from 2011 to 2015.
After reviewing deaths within 90 days of discharge, they found that overweight patients had a 40% lower chance of dying than normal-weight patients. In those who suffered from obesity, this figure increased to 50%.
The trend continued with various concomitant factors, such as smoking, recent weight changes or the presence of other diseases.
Dr. Gribsholt told The Independent about the possible reasons for such results.
"It is possible that obese patients have more extensive energy reserves that can be useful in acute diseases. In addition, obesity is associated with chronic stimulation of the immune system, which can also be useful in acute diseases," she said.
Researchers call this phenomenon the "obesity paradox", the essence of which is that with some diseases, fat people have more chances to survive than people with normal weight.
The Independent cites data from another recently presented study. Doctors from Taipei Medical University Hospital and John Peter Smith Hospital in Texas studied patient data from thousands of American hospitals.
It turned out that overweight patients had a 29 and 22 percent higher chance of surviving pneumonia and sepsis, respectively, than those who were not obese.
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