Thinner isn’t always better in diabetes
Normal-weight people with the condition have higher mortality than those who are overweight, obese
By Meghan Rosen
Skinny doesn’t always mean healthy for people with type 2 diabetes. People who are normal weight when diagnosed with the condition may have a higher risk of death than those who are overweight or obese.
While counterintuitive, the findings may suggest that normal-weight people who have type 2 diabetes are more likely to have other illnesses, frail bones or wasting muscles, researchers report in the Aug. 8 Journal of the American Medical Association.
“This study raises a lot more questions than answers,” says epidemiologist Lynne Wagenknecht of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. But the authors have done “a really nice job examining every which way, upside down and right side up of what might be going on here,” she says.
Led by epidemiologist Mercedes Carnethon of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, researchers combined data from five long-term studies that tracked different groups of healthy people for an average of 14 years. They recorded the body mass index, or BMI, and waist circumference of the 2,625 participants diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during the study periods. Compared with overweight and obese people who developed diabetes, normal-weight participants were twice as likely to die during the studies’ follow-up periods.