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Better weight control in midlife can reduce the risk for chronic disease by 8.6% in older adulthood, suggests a study in Frontiers in Endocrinology. Researchers analyzed data for 15,520 U.S. adults aged 60 or older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to investigate links between changes in BMI across adulthood and the risk for obesity-related complex multimorbidity in older adults. Adults who were stable obese (BMI ≥30) had the highest risk for developing at least 1 chronic disease in older adulthood: Depending on the period of life, odds ratios ranged from 2.49 to 2.90 compared with adults who stayed non-obese. Moving from non-obese to obese in all periods was associated with increased risk for chronic diseases, as was moving from obese to non-obese in the period from midlife to late life. The latter, researchers speculated, could reflect unintentional weight loss that occurs as a precursor to disease.
