«Metabolically healthy obese and metabolically unhealthy non-obese phenotypes in a Russian population»

In the last days of running out year 2016 «European Journal of  Epidemiology» gave world a possibility to touch results of Russian multicentre population-based study called ‘‘Epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases and its risk factors in some regions of the Russian Federation—ESSE-RF’. Publication illuminated aspects of prevalence of metabolically healthy obese (MHO) and metabolically unhealthy non-obese (MUNO) phenotypes. It is known, that overweight and obesity are closely related to the onset and progression of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and several types of cancer. However, it is also obvious that not all obese individuals are at increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic complications. Conversely, non-obese subjects can demonstrate ‘‘unhealthy’’ metabolic profile. Results of analysis of a random sampling of 21,121 subjects (25–65 years), stratified by age and sex has shown, that half of obese Russian inhabitants are metabolically healthy. At the same time, metabolic abnormalities were detected in one third of non-obese participants with a shift to male gender.