Journal
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION
Volume 16, Issue 11, Pages 933-939Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jamda.2015.07.014
Keywords
Reverse epidemiology; risk factor paradox; obesity paradox; cardiovascular risk factors; mortality
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases [K24-DK091419, R01-DK078106]
- AVEO
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Traditional risk factors of cardiovascular death in the general population, including body mass index (BMI), serum cholesterol, and blood pressure (BP), are also found to relate to outcomes in the geriatric population, but in an opposite direction. Some degrees of elevated BMI, serum cholesterols, and BP are reportedly associated with lower, instead of higher, risk of death among the elderly. This phenomenon is termed reverse epidemiology or risk factor paradox (such as obesity paradox) and is also observed in a variety of chronic disease states such as end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis, chronic heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, and AIDS. Several possible causes are hypothesized to explain this risk factor reversal: competing short-term and long-term killers, improved hemodynamic stability in the obese, adipokine protection against tumor necrosis factor-a, lipoprotein protection against endotoxins, and lipophilic toxin sequestration by the adipose tissue. It is possible that the current thresholds for intervention and goal levels for such traditional risk factors as BMI, serum cholesterol, and BP derived based on younger populations do not apply to the elderly, and that new levels for such risk factors should be developed for the elderly population. Reverse epidemiology of conventional cardiovascular risk factors may have a bearing on the management of the geriatric population, thus it deserves further attention. (C) 2015 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
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