A wide-scale transnational study has concluded that an abnormal body mass index (BMI) reading is associated with mortality among East Asians, according to the nation’s top research institute Academia Sinica, which participated in the study.
The study, which followed 1.1 million people in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, India and Bangladesh over a period of 9.2 years on average, was published in the Feb. 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Academia Sinica said yesterday.
More than 30,000 Taiwanese took part in the study, according to biomedical scientist Shen Chen-yang (沈志陽), who led the study.
Photo: Tang Chia-ling, Taipei Times
“We found a U-shaped correlation between BMI and death,” he said. “It showed that mortality was lowest among people with BMI levels of between 22.6 and 27.5.”
It was found that the mortality rate was significantly higher among East Asians — Chinese, Japanese and Koreans — whose BMI levels were either lower than 22.6 or higher than 27.5, he said.
However, among Indians and Bangladeshis, a high BMI did not signal an increased risk of death, he said.
“This could be explained by the fact that malnutrition is a more serious problem in India and Bengal than in other countries in the East Asian region,” Shen said.
Academia Sinica said in a press statement that overall, the risk of death among Asians compared with Europeans seems to be more strongly affected by a low BMI reading than by a high BMI.
The study was one of the largest of its kind in the world and the findings were expected to impact public health policy in Asian countries and provide essential and critical information for implementing weight control programs in Taiwan, the release said.
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