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Two reports published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Flegal et al and Ogden et al find that 35% of men and 40%
of women and 17% of children and teens were obese as of 2014. The corresponding values for class 3-obesity (morbid) were 5.5%
for men, 9.9% for women and 6% for children and teens.
The authors obtained their data
from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a
cross-sectional, nationally representative health examination survey of the US
population that includes measured weight and height.
Obesity in adults was defined when
the BMI (body mass index) was ≥30 and class 3 obesity when the BMI was ≥40.
This report is based on data from
2638 adult men (mean age, 46.8 years) and 2817 women (mean age, 48.4 years)
from the most recent 2 years (2013-2014) of NHANES and data from 21 013 participants in previous NHANES
surveys from 2005 through 2012.
Measurements from 40 780 children and adolescents (mean
age, 11.0 years; 48.8% female) between 1988-1994 and 2013-2014 were also analyzed.
Obesity in children was defined as
a body mass index (BMI) at or above the sex-specific 95th percentile on the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BMI-for-age growth charts.
Extreme obesity was defined as a BMI at or above 120% of the sex-specific 95th
percentile on the CDC BMI-for-age growth charts. Detailed estimates were
presented for 2011-2014. Trend analyses between 2005-2006 and 2013-2014 also
were conducted.
For women, the prevalence of
overall obesity and of class 3 obesity showed significant linear trends for
increase between 2005 and 2014; there were no significant trends for men.
The odds of being obese fluctuated
with age. The researchers found that 41% of adults in their 40s and 50s were
obese, compared with 34% of adults in their 20s and 30s and 39% of adults ages
60 and older.
There were also differences based
on race and ethnicity. At one end of the spectrum were Asian Americans, 13% of who
were obese. At the other end were African Americans, 48% of whom were obese. In
between were Latinos (43%) and whites (36%).,
The two reports suggest that
the U.S. obesity epidemic continues to worsen and that efforts to encourage
Americans to lose or stop putting on more weight are having little effect.
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Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Obesity in the United States
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Two out of three Americans with invasive cancer are living more than five years
Α report by Henley et al from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that “two out of three Americans with
invasive cancer are living five years or more after diagnosis.”
Because of improvements in early detection and treatment of cancer,
the proportion of persons with cancer who survive more than 5 years after
diagnosis has increased. The authors analyzed data from U.S. Cancer Statistics
(USCS) for 2011.
In 2011, a total of 1,532,066 invasive cancers were diagnosed and
reported to central cancer registries in the United, including 786,102 among males
and 745,964 among females. The age-adjusted annual incidence for all cancers
was 451 per 100,000 population: 508 per 100,000 in males and 410 per 100,000 in
females. Among persons aged <20 years, 14,754 cancer cases were diagnosed in
2011. By age group, rates per 100,000 population in 2011 were 18 among persons
aged <20 years, 154 among those aged 20–49 years, 816 among those aged 50–64
years, 1,840 among those aged 65–74 years, and 2,223 among those aged ≥75 years.
By cancer site, rates were highest for cancers of the prostate (128
per 100,000 men), female breast (122 per 100,000 women), lung and bronchus (61
per 100,000 persons), and colon and rectum (40 per 100,000 persons). These four
sites accounted for half of cancers diagnosed in 2011, including 209,292
prostate cancers, 220,097 female breast cancers, 207,339 lung and bronchus
cancers, and 135,260 colon and rectum cancers. In 2011, the cervical cancer
incidence rate was 7.5 per 100,000 women, representing 12,109 reported cancers.
By state in 2011, all-sites cancer incidence rates ranged from 374 to
509 per 100,000 persons. State site-specific cancer incidence rates ranged from
79 to 195 per 100,000 men for prostate cancer, 106 to 153 per 100,000 women for
female breast cancer, 29 to 93 per 100,000 persons for lung cancer, 33 to 49
per 100,000 persons for colorectal cancer, and 4.5 to 13.7 per 100,000 women
for cervical cancer. Healthy People 2020 targets were reached in 37
states for incidence of colorectal cancer and in 28 states for incidence of
cervical cancer. Compared with the states and DC, cancer incidence rates in
Puerto Rico in 2011 were lower for all-sites cancer (339 per 100,000 persons),
lung cancer (17 per 100,000 persons), and breast cancer (93 per 100,000 women),
but higher for prostate cancer (150 per 100,000 men), colorectal cancer (43 per
100,000 persons), and cervical cancer (13.5 per 100,000 women).
Among persons with cancer diagnosed during 2003–2010, the 5-year relative
survival rate was 65%. This percentage was similar for males and females. The
5-year relative survival was highest among those diagnosed with cancer before
age 45 years (81%) and decreased with increasing age. Among the most common
cancer sites, 5-year relative survival was highest for prostate cancer (97%)
and breast cancer (88%), intermediate for colorectal cancer (63%), and lowest
for lung cancer (18%). The 5-year relative survival after any cancer diagnosis
was lower for black persons (60%) than for white persons (65%) and for each
cancer site.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of Death
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January 11, 2014 marked the 50th anniversary
of the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. This year the office of Surgeon General has presented half a century's worth
of progress in tobacco prevention and control on their website to commemorate
the 1964 landmark report, by Dr. Luther Terry1. That report was the
first federal government document to link smoking with poor health such as lung
cancer and heart disease.
The
reputation that smoking held during the first half of the 20th century was very
different to how it is viewed today. Smoking became popular in America during
1930s. During this time, smoking was regarded as sophisticated and glamorous.
Due to its newfound popularity, research on smoking during this era often
failed to find clear evidence of serious pathology.
In 1947, Richard Doll and
A. Bradford Hill of the British Medical Research Council created a statistical
technique to evaluate the dangers of smoking. In 1950 they published an article
in the BMJ2 documenting the association
between rising rates of lung cancer and increasing numbers of smokers.
In 1950, Wynder EL, a
medical student, and Graham EA, published a landmark article in JAMA3
comparing the incidence of lung cancer in their nonsmoking and smoking
patients at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. They concluded “cigarette smoking, over a long period, is at
least one important factor in the striking increase in bronchogenic cancer.”
Tobacco
use remains the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the
United States according to the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans each year, with more than
41,000 of these deaths due to exposure to secondhand smoke. In addition,
smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $289 billion a
year, including at least $133 billion in direct medical care for adults and
$156 billion in lost productivity.
The CDC states that smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. In
fact, smoking is the cause for one in five deaths in the United States. Smoking
can cause cancer in almost every organ (bladder, blood-acute myeloid leukemia,
cervix, colon and rectum, esophagus, kidney and ureter, larynx, liver,
oropharynx-includes parts of the throat, tongue, soft palate, and the tonsils,
pancreas, stomach, trachea, bronchus, and lung).
•
Smoking causes about 90% of all lung cancer
deaths in men and women and 80% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD).
•
Smoking is estimated to increase the risk for
coronary heart disease and stroke by 2 to 4 times and for lung cancer by 25
times.
Two
recent studies present risks from smoking and its prevalence in the different
countries across the globe.
Jacobs et al
research that was published in the Annals ofEpidemiology analyzed data on smoking rates
from the National Health Interview Survey, as well as data on the risks of
smoking from epidemiologic studies, to estimate the proportion of U.S. cancer
deaths caused by smoking— what the researchers called the population attributable fraction
(PAF).
The
researchers looked at deaths from the 12 cancers formally linked to smoking by
the U.S. surgeon general and they observed that the PAF was 28.7 percent.
However, after factoring in cancer deaths than may have been caused by smoking,
the PAF was 31.7 percent. These estimates don’t factor in other potential cancer deaths caused by secondhand
smoke or other kinds of smoking such as cigars, pipes or smokeless tobacco.
While there
has been a decline in smoking prevalence, the current and previous PAF
estimates may remain similar due to the addition of new cancers that may be
caused by smoking, higher rates of lung cancer deaths among female smokers, and
a greater focus on reducing deaths from cancer caused by factors other than smoking.
However, the authors noted that efforts to reduce
smoking haven’t
been futile. According to the CDC, more than 40 percent of Americans smoked in
the 1960s, but today, only 18 percent of Americans smoke.
The group by Ng et al reported In JAMA the prevalence and cigarette
consumption in 187 Countries between the years 1980-2012.
The
researchers identified nationally representative sources that measured tobacco
use (n = 2102 country-years of data) and
synthesized age-sex-country-year observations (n = 38 315) using spatial-temporal
Gaussian process regression to model prevalence estimates by age, sex, country,
and year.
Globally
modeled age-standardized prevalence of daily tobacco smoking in the population
older than 15 years decreased from 41% in 1980 to 31% in 2012 for men and from
10% to 6% for women. Despite the decline in prevalence, the number of daily
smokers increased from 721 million in 1980 to 967 million in 2012. The populous China is home to
more than 300 million smokers and 43% of the world’s cigarette production. The World Health
Organization estimates that smoking kills more than one million of the Chinese
population each year and the cost from death and complications related to
smoking would have cost China $500 billion in the decade ending in 2015. Modeled
prevalence rates exhibited substantial variation across age, sex, and
countries, with rates below 5% for women in some African countries to 57% for
men in Indonesia. The following are some
examples of prevalence of smoking in males, females and both sexes in few
countries with Greece having the most overall smokers and the United States the
fewer while Indonesia has the most male smokers and the fewer female smokers.
Countries Males Females Both sexes
Greece 41% 35% 38%
Indonesia 57% 4% 37%
US 17% 14% 16%
The authors
concluded that since 1980, large reductions in the estimated prevalence of
daily smoking were observed in both men and women, but because of population
growth, the number of smokers increased significantly.
Given the
importance of tobacco as a risk to health, monitoring the distribution and
intensity of tobacco use is critical for identifying priority areas for action
and for evaluating progress. Recent
studies in multi-country survey programs have substantially expanded the
primary data available for monitoring. The most recent cross-sectional
estimates of smoking prevalence were for 2011 and the publication of The Tobacco Atlas has greatly
facilitated the development of policies based on these data.
Since the release
of the Surgeon General report on the adverse effects of smoking, a wide range
of interventions became available, including increasing prices and bans on
advertising, promotion, sales to minors, and smoking in public places. The
adoption of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003 and its
subsequent ratification by 177 countries reflects growing global efforts to
control tobacco. Despite such efforts, tobacco continues to adversely influence
global health patterns, leading to 5.7 million deaths, 6.9% of years of life
lost, and 5.5% of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2010 requiring that
efforts towards further decrease and/or elimination of smoking across the
planet should continue.
References
1. Terry, Luther et al. Smoking and Health:
Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States.
U-23 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Public Health Service
Publication No. 1103. 1964 May
3. Doll R, Hill AB. Smoking and carcinoma of the lung:
preliminary report. British Medical
Journal 1950:2 739-48
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