Heart-disease deaths related to obesity have tripled since 1999.
According to new findings presented at the American Heart Association’s annual conference in Chicago, deaths from heart disease as a result of obesity increased 2.8 times between 1999 and 2020.
The increase was especially prominent among middle-aged men, black adults, Midwesterners and rural residents.
The researchers behind the study used public-health data to review heart-disease deaths in recent decades.
Close to 230,000 heart-disease deaths were recorded over the 21 years of the study.
The study revealed a 5% annual increase in the overall rate of obesity-related heart disease deaths.
For men, the obesity-related heart disease death rate rose 243%, from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.2 per 100,000 in 2020. Middle-aged men aged 55 to 64 saw a 165% increase, from 5.5 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 14.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2020.
Among women, the death rate rose significantly, but significantly less than men, by 131%, from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2020.
Among America’s various ethnic and racial groups, the death rate was highest among Black adults at 3.9 deaths per 100,000.
The study also showed that rural residents had an obesity-related heart disease death rate of 4 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, compared with 2.9 deaths per 100,000 among urban dwellers.
The highest rates were seen in the Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin, with an age-adjusted death rate of 3.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
The Northeast states had the lowest rate at 2.8 deaths per 100,000.
Another interesting, and alarming, finding was that the increase in the heart-disease death rate outpaced the increase in the national obesity rate.
“The relative change in ischemic heart disease deaths related to obesity that was observed in this study between 1999 and 2020 was greater than the overall increase in obesity prevalence that we’ve seen in the United States, from about 30% to about 40% over this same time frame,” Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology and an associate professor of cardiology, medical social sciences and preventive medicine at Northwestern School of Medicine in Chicago.
This could be because obesity is now included more as a contributing factor on death certificates, or it could be for other reasons that are unclear at present.