The relationship between obesity subtypes based on BMI and cardio-cerebrovascular disease

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of various obesity phenotypes and metabolic abnormalities on cardio-cerebrovascular disease. We performed a large-scale, cross-sectional study including 10,089 participants aged ≥18 years in the National High-Technology district of Suzhou, China, from March 2016 to April 2016. Cardio-cerebrovascular disease included stroke and coronary heart disease. The prevalence rates of cardio-cerebrovascular disease among people with normal weight, overweight, and obesity in the unhealthy metabolism subgroup were higher than those among the three BMI groups in the healthy metabolism subgroup. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that after adjustment, the odds ratio (OR) of metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) with cardio-cerebrovascular disease was not statistically significant and that metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) was statistically associated with cardio-cerebrovascular disease, with an OR of 2.106 (1.294–3.429) in Model 1 and 3.043 (1.510–6.133) in Model 2. This study also found that regardless of whether in Model 1 or Model 2, the number of participants with MHO was much lower than that of those with MUO. Therefore, the obese population usually had metabolic abnormalities. Although MHO was not statistically associated with cardio-cerebrovascular disease, obesity should be controlled along with metabolic abnormalities to reduce the risk of cardio-cerebrovascular disease.