Obesity – A Worldwide Epidemic

“Today, obesity has become a worldwide epidemic”, said Prof. Dr. Jaap C. Seidell, from the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven (The Netherlands) on Saturday, October 27, 2001 at the “2nd International Symposium on Obesity and Hypertension” (ISOH`01) at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch. “The increase in obesity is most notable in countries undergoing rapid economic transition, as in many countries of Asia and Latin America”. The Dutch epidemiologist referred to a recent WHO report which attributed this process to the adoption of “western” lifestyles such as high-calorie diets and lack of physical activity.

In Berlin, Prof. Seidell presented some recent figures to illustrate the problem. “Currently more than half the US population, about 125
million, are overweight and more than 25 million  (20 per cent) are obese. Although in most European countries,  people who are obese or overweight are less common than in the USA, they still represent  approximately 100 million adults in the EU. The European countries most affected include Germany, Finland, and Britain, where more than 50 per cent of the adult population is overweight. As in North America, more than 20 per cent of the population in most European countries are frankly obese”.

“In  Germany more than 16 million people are obese while more than 40 million or half the population, is overweight”, added Prof. Arya Sharma, physician and hypertension expert at the Franz Volhard Clinic for Cardiovascular Diseases of the Charité, Medical School of the Humboldt University of Berlin and one of the organisers of the symposium.

Risk Factor for Ill Health

Obesity is now recognized as an important risk factor for a variety of medical problems including cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes. “It is the most important risk factor for the development of  type-2 diabetes”, Prof. Seidell said. Given the increase in obesity, WHO currently predicts that the worldwide prevalence of diabetes will increase from 140 million in 1997 to about 300 million in 2025.

Prevention by Changing Lifestyles

“Obesity and type-2 diabetes are common consequences of changing lifestyles over the past decades”, Prof. Seidell explained. However, weight reduction has been shown to significantly improve blood pressure as wells as blood lipid levels and to reduce the risk for type-2 diabetes. Although succesfull in the short term, individual changes in life style are proving difficult if not impossible to implement in the long term. “These developments point to the urgent need to develop global and national plans for the successfull prevention and management of obesity and type-2 diabetes. However, such strategies remain to be developed”, the Dutch scientist warned.

Barbara Bachtler
Press and Public Affairs
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)
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