Katherine M Flegal

..The effects of obesity on morbidity may be greater than its effects on mortality. The increasing prevalence of obesity poses challenges for researchers and for policy makers...

..Estimates of deaths attributable to obesity can be biased if confounding and effect modification are not properly taken into account or if the relative risks are not estimated accurately...

..As the prevalence of obesity increases in the United States, concern over the association of body weight with excess mortality has also increased...

..Thus, it may be difficult to estimate deaths attributable to obesity with adequate accuracy and precision. We urge efforts to improve the data and methods for estimating this statistic...

..These analyses suggest that residual confounding by smoking or preexisting illness had little effect on previous estimates of attributable fractions from nationally representative data with measured heights and weights...

..Estimates of excess mortality associated with body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)) have been calculated for the US population...

..However, lower smoking prevalence may be associated with increased obesity prevalence. I sought to estimate the effect of decreases in smoking prevalence on obesity prevalence in the United States population...

..For younger children, either set of reference data could be used...

..The association of body mass index (BMI) with cause-specific mortality has not been reported for the US population...

..Moreover, multiple imputation usually yields larger estimated standard errors than those obtained with single imputation...

..Body mass index (BMI)-for-age has been recommended as a screening test for excess adiposity in children and adolescents...

..Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and the waist-stature ratio (WSR) are considered to be possible proxies for adiposity...

..The prevalence of overweight among children in the United States increased between 1976-1980 and 1988-1994, but estimates for the current decade are unknown...

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..The 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) growth charts included lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) parameters intended to calculate smoothed percentiles from only the 3rd to the 97th percentile...

..BMI, which is an indirect measure of body fat, may inadequately represent the biological effect of body fat percentage on lipid concentrations...

..Between 1980 and 1999, the prevalence of adult obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥30) increased in the United States and the distribution of BMI changed. More recent data suggested a slowing or leveling off of these trends...

..The prevalence of obesity and overweight increased in the United States between 1978 and 1991. More recent reports have suggested continued increases but are based on self-reported data...

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..The purpose of this study was to estimate the impact on hypertension prevalence of measurement error and selected risk factors...

..The prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased markedly in the last 2 decades in the United States...

..We sought to describe differences between normal weight, overweight, and obese adults in use of specific prescription medication classes...

..The prevalence of childhood obesity increased in the 1980s and 1990s but there were no significant changes in prevalence between 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 in the United States...

..The prevalence of overweight in children and adolescents and obesity in adults in the United States has increased over several decades...

..The Mexican-American population in the United States, both children and adults, is showing trends in overweight and obesity over time that are similar to those seen in other segments of the U.S. population and indeed in many countries...

..The prevalence of obesity increased in the United States between 1976-1980 and 1988-1994 and again between 1988-1994 and 1999-2000...

..Recommendations based on scanty data have been made to lower the body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)) cutoff for obesity in Asians...

..The prevalence of high body mass index (BMI) among children and adolescents in the United States appeared to plateau between 1999 and 2006...

..The causes of obesity are poorly understood, and both the prevention and the treatment of obesity are difficult. In this context, the ability to track epidemiologic trends in overweight and obesity is important...

..Further research would be useful to elucidate the potential effects and importance of reverse causation or illness-related weight loss as a source of bias in the observed associations between weight and mortality in cohort studies...

..Many studies of dietary and behavioral treatments, however, have shown that maintenance of weight loss is difficult. The social and economic costs of obesity and of attempts to prevent or to treat obesity are high...

..To present a clinical version of the 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) growth charts and to compare them with the previous version, the 1977 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) growth charts...

..Blood lead levels have decreased markedly since the late 1970s. In NHANES III, conducted during 1988-1994, few adults had levels > 20 microg/dL...

..These methods can also be used to estimate the attributable number of cause-specific deaths and their standard errors when the time period for the accrual of deaths is short...

..Despite their limitations, BMI-based definitions of overweight and obesity provide working practical definitions that are valuable for general public health surveillance and screening...

..The definitions of overweight generally used are working definitions that are valuable for general public health surveillance, screening and similar purposes...

..Previous studies to develop and validate bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) equations to predict body composition were limited by small sample sizes, sex specificity, and reliance on reference methods that use a 2-component model...

..To determine cut offs to define thinness in children and adolescents, based on body mass index at age 18 years...

..S. and to evaluate the effects of age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, parental history of diabetes, overweight, and serum glucose on HbA(1c) levels...

..The prevalence of overweight among US children and adolescents increased between 1980 and 2004...

..To examine the relation of family income, expressed relative to the poverty threshold, to the prevalence of childhood overweight, and to determine whether the association differs by race/ethnicity and time period...

..56 nmol/L. Mean serum selenium levels differed by age group, sex, race ethnicity, PIR, and geographic region. The US population has slight differences in serum selenium levels by demographic factors...

..The prevalence of adult obesity has increased in recent decades. It is important to predict the long-term effect of body weight, and changes in body weight, in middle age on longevity and Medicare costs in older ages...

..Flegal et al (JAMA 2005;293:1861-7) then published lower estimates of obesity-associated deaths for 2000. All 3 studies incorporated data from the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I)...

..These comparisons are undertaken with 2 sets of cutoff values...

..In conclusion, individuals with blood lead levels in the range of NHANES II do not appear to have increased risk of cancer mortality...

..The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalences of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes, and impaired fasting glucose (IFG) in U.S. adults during 1999-2002, and compare prevalences to those in 1988-1994...

..Before estimating smoothed percentiles of weight-for-height and BMI-for-age to construct the WHO growth charts, WHO excluded observations that were considered to represent unhealthy weights for height...