TUESDAY, Oct. 4 (HealthDay News) -- American men and women run substantial long-term risks of becoming overweight or obese, according to a study in the Oct. 4 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
Ramachandran S. Vasan, M.D., of the Framingham Heart Study, and colleagues studied 4,117 white men and women aged 30 to 59. Subjects were weighed at regular intervals starting in 1971.
Within four years, 14% to 19% of the women and 26% to 30% of the men became overweight, and 5% to 7% of the women and 7% to 9% of the men became obese. Over a 30-year period, one in two adults became overweight and one in four developed obesity.
The findings indicate that excess weight will be "a large public health burden" and that "the future burden of obesity-associated diseases may be substantial," the authors conclude.
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