New tool goes beyond BMI to identify 18 obesity health risks

Although BMI has its limitations, it is currently the metric that medicine often defaults to when predicting weight-related health problems. The new tool is expected to more accurately define who is at risk of obesity complications, based not only on BMI but also on measures such as family history, diet, current illnesses and socio-economic factors extracted from medical records.

One of the goals of this study is to better understand candidates for obesity drugs, which are often prescribed based on BMI alone or in combination with BMI and another disease. The initial target was type 2 diabetes, but over time it became clear that it had the power to not only promote significant weight loss, but also alleviate cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, liver disease, sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis. But determining who is best suited for costly lifelong treatment is uncertain.

“We really wanted an integrated model where we could look at 18 different obesity-related complications instead of one,” Claudia Langenberg, co-author of a study on the new model published Thursday in Nature Medicine, said at a media briefing on Tuesday. She is Director and Professor of Medicine and Population Health at the University Institute of Precision Healthcare at Queen Mary University of London.

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