Coronary Heart Disease Risk Increases with BMI.

The incidence of coronary heart disease increases with BMI so that every 5-unit rise in BMI increases incidence by 23%, which is equivalent to the risk conferred by getting older by 2.5 years. The findings come from a study of 1.2 million women from England and Scotland who were followed for an average of 9 years. Investigators discovered that one in 11 lean middle-aged women developed coronary heart disease between the ages of 55 to 74 years. This risk progressively increased with BMI, reaching 1 in 6 for obese women. The study is published in BMC Medicine.