Experts have warned that people who suffer from obesity have a 70 percent increased risk of being hospitalized or dying due to an infectious disease, while those who suffer from severe obesity have a three-fold increased risk.
They added that this trend may get worse in the coming decades if obesity rates continue to rise.
It is known that obesity significantly increases the risk of hospitalization or death, due to infectious diseases such as influenza, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections, respiratory infections, and the Corona virus.
The new study, published in the Lancet medical journal, was based on global research that included more than 540,000 people, including more than 470,000 adults from the Biobank database in the United Kingdom.
Using risk estimates, the researchers found that obesity was associated with one in 10 deaths from infections globally in 2023.
The odds of death varied between countries, but about 1 in 6 deaths in the United Kingdom, and 1 in 4 deaths in the United States, were due to this association.
In general, obesity may be a major factor in about 600,000 deaths out of 5.4 million deaths due to infectious diseases during 2023, equivalent to 10.8 percent, according to the study.
In the United Kingdom, obesity-related deaths amounted to 7,300 of the 42,000 deaths that year, or 17.4 percent.
date:2026-02-10 05:35:00