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. 2021 Jul 29;11(1):15500.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-94974-z.

Non-communicable diseases deaths attributable to high body mass index in Chile

Ricardo Riquelme  1   2 , Leandro F M Rezende  3 , Juan Guzmán-Habinger  1   4 , Javiera L Chávez  5 , Carlos Celis-Morales  6   7   8 , Catterina Ferreccio  9 , Gerson Ferrari  10
Affiliations

Non-communicable diseases deaths attributable to high body mass index in Chile

Ricardo Riquelme et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

We estimated the proportion and number of deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCD) attributable to high body mass index (BMI) in Chile in 2018. We used data from 5927 adults from a 2016-2017 Chilean National Health Survey to describe the distribution of BMI. We obtained the number of deaths from NCD from the Ministry of Health. Relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals per 5 units higher BMI for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease were retrieved from the Global BMI Mortality Collaboration meta-analyses. The prevalences of overweight and obesity were 38.9% and 39.1%, respectively. We estimated that reducing population-wide BMI to a theoretical minimum risk exposure level (mean BMI: 22.0 kg/m2; standard deviation: 1) could prevent approximately 21,977 deaths per year (95%CI 13,981-29,928). These deaths represented about 31.6% of major NCD deaths (20.1-43.1) and 20.4% of all deaths (12.9-27.7) that occurred in 2018. Most of these preventable deaths were from cardiovascular diseases (11,474 deaths; 95% CI 7302-15,621), followed by cancer (5597 deaths; 95% CI 3560-7622) and respiratory disease (4906 deaths; 95% CI 3119-6684). A substantial burden of NCD deaths was attributable to high BMI in Chile. Policies and population-wide interventions are needed to reduce the burden of NCD due to high BMI in Chile.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of body mass index (kg/m2) in adults from Chile by sex, 2016–2017.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Population attributable fraction of (A) cancer; (B) cardiovascular disease; (C) respiratory disease; (D) major non-communicable disease; (E) all-cause mortality due to high body mass index in 15 Chilean geographical regions. Population attributable fraction indicate the proportion (%) of deaths attributable to cause-specific and all-causes of deaths. The size of the circle represents the absolute number of cause-specific and all-causes of deaths attributable to high body mass index. Figure was created from the R software (version 4.0.5: Copyright (C) 2020 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) Link: https://www.r-project.org/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Population attributable fraction of (A) cancer; (B) cardiovascular disease; (C) respiratory disease; (D) major non-communicable disease; (E) all-cause mortality due to high body mass index in 15 Chilean geographical regions. Population attributable fraction indicate the proportion (%) of deaths attributable to cause-specific and all-causes of deaths. The size of the circle represents the absolute number of cause-specific and all-causes of deaths attributable to high body mass index. Figure was created from the R software (version 4.0.5: Copyright (C) 2020 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) Link: https://www.r-project.org/).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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