Higher Drug Usage Among Obese in the US

Obese adults in the United States use different types of prescription drugs more frequently than adults of norma weight, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found in the study.

Medication to treat high blood pressure and high colesterol topped the list. Roughly a third of obese adults over the age of 20 used at least one drug to lower blood prssure and one in five used a cholesterol-lowering drug. That compares to about 17 per cent of adults of normal weight on blood pressure medications and one in 10 on chloesterol drugs.

"Given the health risks of obesity, these results aren't terribly surprising-they put numbers to a trend we already suspected was taking place," said Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, a general internist (specialist in internal medicine) at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. Researchers. led by Dr. Brian Kit at the CDC's Narional Center for Health Statistics, analysed prescription medication use among adults in a nationally representative  sample of 10,000 Americans. The team defined obesity as habing a body mass index ( BMI ) of 30 or higher.  BMI is a measure of weight relative to height. When they looked at the use of 10 different drug classes between the years 2005 and 2008, the researchers found higher numbers of obese Americans were taking eight of the 10 medication types. In addition to blood pressure and cholesterol drugs, medication for treating diabetes, asthma and thyroid problems, as well as antidepressant drugs and painkillers, were taken by a higher proportion of obese people in some or all age groups. 

Sex hormones were the only class of drugs used less by obese people. Sedatives use was about the same. The obese participants were also more likely to be on multiple drugs  at once, althought the researchers saw a similiar pattern among adults aged over 65, regardless of weight. Among all women aged over 65, more than 90 per cent were taking one medication, 66 per cent were taking three or more drugs and 39 per cent were taking five or more drugs. Men in the same age group had roughly the same usage. While obesity is one factor that may contribute to a person's  pattern of prescription drug use, the study found that regardless of weight status, prescription medication use is  hight among all groups, especially older adults. More than 50 per cent of adults of normal weight aged over 20 per cent used one or more prescriotion drugs. The findings, the researchers wrote in Annals of Epidemiology, could just reflect doctors folowing current treatment guidelines for risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Still all drugs come with side effects and using more  than one at once only raises the risk of adverse events.