Obese heart-failure patients appear to live longer than people of normal weight who develop the disabling condition, a new study suggests. Researchers tracked nearly 1,500 heart failure patients, most of whom were overweight or obese before their diagnosis. They found that 38 per cent of obese and 45 per cent of overweight patients died over 10 years, compared with 51 per cent of normal-weight patients. The difference held even if they also had other health issues such as diabetes or high blood pressure. “At this time the reasons for this beneficial association are not clear,” said lead researcher Dr. Anita Deswal, a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. It’s possible that “fat itself may be protective,” said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the study. However, Fonarow cautioned that this study doesn’t give you a license to gain weight in hopes of living longer should you develop heart failure. The association seen in the study does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. “These findings should not be taken as an excuse for individuals without heart failure to gain weight, as this would only increase the risk of developing heart failure, other heart disease, and diabetes in the first place,” said Fonarow, a spokesman for the American Heart Association. It’s known that obesity increases the risk for heart failure, which means the heart can’t pump blood as it should. However, several investigators have found that in patients with heart failure, overweight and obesity are associated with better survival, compared with normal weight. This is often referred to as the “obesity paradox,” Deswal said. It is possible that obese and overweight heart failure patients are better able to use hormones and enzymes to support heart function than the normal-weight patients, she noted. Thus, obesity may provide a survival advantage when spontaneous weight loss occurs as heart failure gets worse, she said. New York Times News Service posted on December 25, 2014 at 12:00AM jtnng.blogspot/
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 23:22:03 +0000
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