Effects of Weight Loss in Outpatients with Mild Chronic Heart Failure: Findings from the J-MELODIC Study

Obesity promotes cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), and cancer. However, in several diseases, including chronic heart failure (CHF), patients with obesity have a better prognosis than those without obesity; this is known as the “obesity paradox”.1, 2 Conversely, low body weight (BW) and low body mass index (BMI) are reportedly strong predictors of heart failure (HF) exacerbation and death. Takiguchi et al. reported BMI as an independent predictor of cardiac and all-cause mortality in hospitalized patients with HF with the risk progressively increasing from obese to overweight, and normal to underweight patients,3 although being markedly underweight is probably an indication of cardiac cachexia.

Source: Journal of Cardiac Failure - November 15, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Yoshitaka Okuhara, Masanori Asakura, Yoshiyuki Orihara, Yoshiro Naito, Takeshi Tsujino, Masaharu Ishihara, Tohru Masuyama, J-MELODIC study investigators Source Type: research