Fat alone not fatal to heart

NEW YORK - Being overweight or obese, in the absence of high blood pressure, does not clearly increase the risk of death from heart attack or stroke, French researchers report in the journal Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

"The role of obesity and overweight as independent risk factors for (heart attack and stroke) is still debated," Dr Athanase Benetos and colleagues from the Centre d'Investigations Preventives et Cliniques in Paris write.

The team studied the impact of overweight on fatal heart attacks or strokes according to the presence or absence of associated risk factors, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, in more than 240,000 adults who had a standard health checkup between 1972 and 1988 and were followed for an average of 14 years.

Forty-two per cent of the men and 21 per cent of the women were overweight and about 5 per cent in each group were obese. In both sexes, the rate of high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol increased significantly with increasing overweight status.

During follow-up, 2949 men and 929 women died of heart attack or stroke.

- REUTERS