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Obesity

Obesity and cardiometabolic disease — more than meets the eye

Nature Reviews Endocrinology volume 13, pages 566–568 (2017)Cite this article

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Whether obesity is a cause of type 2 diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease or a shared risk factor has been an enduring subject of debate. Lyall and colleagues have used Mendelian randomization to conclude that there is a causal relationship between obesity and cardiometabolic disease. However, the analyses fail key inherent assumptions. The article does not negate a large body of data indicating that insulin resistance is the primary mechanism driving the progression of cardiometabolic disease.

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Figure 1: Mendelian randomization study assessing the relationship between BMI and coronary heart disease.

References

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from the NIH for the UAB Diabetes Research Center (DK-079626) and Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award (to SA; K01 HL136700), and the American Heart Association for the Strategically Focused Obesity Research Center (17SFRN33610070),

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1675 University Boulevard, Birmingham, 35294–3360, Alabama, USA

    Stella Aslibekyan

  2. Department of Nutrition Sciences and at the Birmingham VA Medical Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1675 University Boulevard, Birmingham, 35294–3360, Alabama, USA

    W. Timothy Garvey

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  1. Stella Aslibekyan
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Correspondence to W. Timothy Garvey.

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Aslibekyan, S., Garvey, W. Obesity and cardiometabolic disease — more than meets the eye. Nat Rev Endocrinol 13, 566–568 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2017.112

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