Study: Research may have underestimated US deaths caused by obesity.

A number of media outlets are reporting on the results of a new study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, which found that previous research had underestimated the number of deaths caused by obesity in the US each year.

        On its Thursday evening broadcast, NBC Nightly News reported that in the “eye-opening new report, researchers studied men and women between the ages of 40 to 85 over a 20-year period” and discovered “that obesity was likely responsible for about 18% of deaths during that time, one out of five Americans.”

        The Los Angeles Times (8/16, Healy, 3.4M) included that the “new figures do not reflect newly discovered facts about obesity’s effects on health,” but were determined through an examination of obesity across the population “using historical survey data.” The research team was then able to find “differences in excess weight status across different gender, ethnic and age groups,” and combined the “data with existing ‘mortality risk’ statistics.”

        USA Today (8/16, Hellmich, 5.82M) reports that the research team estimated that “between 1986 and 2006, 27% of deaths among black women; 22% of deaths among white women; 5% of deaths among black men; and 16% of deaths among white men could be attributed to being overweight or obese.”

        The Cleveland Plain Dealer (8/16, 927K) adds that the study found the 18 percent of deaths caused by obesity in people aged 40-85 is “almost four times more than the prevailing wisdom of 5 percent.” According to the researchers, the study was the first to account for “differences in age, birth cohort, sex, and race in analyzing Americans’ risk for death from obesity.” Study lead author Ryan Masters, PhD, of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, said, “We believe we have a clearer picture of how obesity is impacting the [United States] population.”

        CDC telephone survey finds continuing high rates of obesity. The AP (8/16, Stobbe) reports that the annual national telephone survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “found 13 states with very high rates of obesity last year,” and the overall number “of US adults deemed obese has been about the same for years now.” The survey found that “at least 30 percent of adults were obese in 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.”