Obesity is known to increase susceptibility to infections and their severity, yet its impact across the full spectrum of infectious diseases has been poorly characterized. To address this gap, investigators examined associations between obesity and 925 infectious diseases, infection-related hospitalizations, and mortality using data from two Finnish cohorts (n=67,766; mean age: 42.1 years) and the UK Biobank (n=479,498; mean age: 57 years). When compared with individuals with a healthy weight, those with class III obesity had approximately a threefold higher risk of infection-related hospitalization (Finnish cohorts: HR 2.75; UK Biobank: HR 3.07) and death (Finnish cohorts: HR 3.06; UK Biobank: HR 3.54).
In pooled analyses, individuals with any class of obesity had a hazard ratio of 1.7 for fatal or non-fatal severe infection. When these risk estimates were applied to global burden of…
