Exploring the obesity parADOX: A multisystem review

Abstract

Obesity has plagued the entire world and is a known risk factor across the spectrum of diseases involving neurological, cardiovascular, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and hematological and is commonly associated with poor clinical outcomes. Obesity paradox is a concept that contradicts the prevailing medical knowledge by proposing the notion that obese patients have better mortality, morbidity, and survival rates when compared to the non-obese patient population suffering with the similar medical conditions. Although observed more commonly in patients with cardiovascular diseases, more research is coming forward citing the similar effects in critically ill patients, those with chronic kidney disease, end stage renal disease, and cancer patients. Despite extensive research, the underlying mechanisms of the Obesity Paradox remain unclear, complicated by the reliance on BMI and the neglect of confounding factors like age, comorbidities, socioeconomic status, and one of the commonly proposed solutions is to make use of other anthropological indices of obesity. This calls for a more in-depth dive into this issue to find an explanation behind this paradox or even more to confirm if it actually exists.