Obesity is associated with a broad range of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events, Scottish and Australian researchers report.

“That’s a potentially huge public health problem and burden on the health care system,” senior investigator Dr. John J. V. McMurray told Reuters Health. “Of course, our focus was just on cardiovascular disease and not the other problems also associated with obesity - including cancer.”

The whole spectrum of cardiovascular problems related to obesity has not been evaluated in a single population-based cohort, Murray of the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, and colleagues note.

To do so, starting in the early 1970s, the researchers followed more than 15,000 people, ages 45 to 64 years, from two towns in the Glasgow area. At the beginning of the study, less than half of the subjects had a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9, which is considered to be within a normal weight range. Over 2,000 had a BMI of 30 or higher, which is considered to be obese.

In the subsequent 20 years, the obese subjects had an increased risk of a variety of cardiovascular problems compared with normal weight subjects, according to the report in the European Journal of Cardiology.

Compared with the normal-weight subjects, obese subjects had 1.6-times the risk of death or hospital admission; 2.0-times the risk of heart failure; 1.4-times the risk of stroke; 2.3-times the risk a blood clot; and 1.8-times the risk of developing an abnormal heart rhythm.

Over the follow-up period, the researchers calculate, for every 100 middle-age obese men there were 9 additional cardiovascular deaths and 36 cardiovascular hospitalizations. The corresponding figures in women were 7 deaths and 28 admissions.

The investigators note that obesity was measured at study entry only and participants may have become obese later, leading to underestimation of the effects.

The team also found that there were 3- or 4-times as many hospital admissions as deaths related to obesity, noting that the rising rates of obesity may have a very large impact “not only on individual health but on the hospital sector.”

SOURCE: European Heart Journal, January 2006.