Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018;22(8):975-981.
doi: 10.1007/s12603-018-1047-z.

BMI, Waist Circumference and All-Cause Mortality in a Middle-Aged and Elderly Chinese Population

H Hu  1 , J Wang, X Han, Y Li, F Wang, J Yuan, X Miao, H Yang, M He
Affiliations
Free article

BMI, Waist Circumference and All-Cause Mortality in a Middle-Aged and Elderly Chinese Population

H Hu et al. J Nutr Health Aging. 2018.
Free article

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the association of obesity and all-cause mortality in a sample of middle-aged and elderly population.

Design and setting: Information of participants was collected in the Dongfeng-Tongji study, a perspective cohort study of Chinese occupational population. The main outcome was risk of death after 8.5 years of follow-up.

Participants and measurements: We examined the association of BMI, waist circumference (WC, and waist-height ratio (WHtR) with all-cause mortality in the Dongfeng-Tongji cohort study (n=26,143). Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all-cause mortality. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curves and net reclassification improvement (NRI) were used to calculate the power of prediction models.

Results: During a mean of 8.5 years of follow-up, 2,246 deaths were identified. There is a U-shaped association of BMI with all-cause mortality in the middle-aged and elderly Chinese population. Compared with individuals with normal BMI, underweight was positively (HR=2.16, 95% CI: 1.73, 2.69) while overweight (HR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.67, 0.84) and obesity (HR=0.67, 95% CI: 0.56, 0.79) were negatively associated with all-cause mortality after adjustment for potential confounders including WC. In contrast, WC (Q5 vs. Q1, HR=1.55, 95% CI: 1.29, 1.86) and WHtR (Q5 vs.Q1, HR=1.69, 95% CI: 1.40, 2.04) were positively associated with mortality after further adjustment for BMI (P trend < 0.001). Addition of both BMI and WC into the all-cause mortality predictive model significantly increased AUC (P =0.0002) and NRI (NRI = 2.57%, P = 0.0007).

Conclusions: BMI and WC/WHtR were independently associated with all-cause mortality after mutual adjustment. Combination of BMI and WC/WHtR improved the predictive ability of all-cause mortality risk in the middle-aged and elderly population.

Keywords: Prospective cohort; body-shape; death.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

None. The authors declare that they have no competing interest

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. BMJ. 2016 May 04;353:i2156 - PubMed
    1. Public Health Nutr. 2015 Jul;18(10):1839-46 - PubMed
    1. JAMA. 2013 Jan 2;309(1):71-82 - PubMed
    1. BMC Public Health. 2014 Jan 08;14:14 - PubMed
    1. Ann Intern Med. 2016 Apr 19;164(8):532-41 - PubMed

Publication types