Instability of Healthy Overweight and Obesity Phenotypes over the Long Term in Young Participants in the HARVEST Study: Influence of Sex

Abstract

Background: Whether healthy metabolic status is stable or only temporary is still controversial. The aim of the present study was to determine the frequency of the transition from metabolically healthy to metabolically unhealthy status, or vice versa, over the long term. Methods: We examined 970 individuals of 18 to 45 years of age. The participants’ mean age was 33.1 ± 8.6 years and mean BP was 145.5 ± 10.6/93.5 ± 5.7 mmHg. Participants were classified into four groups according to whether they had normal weight or overweight/obesity (OwOb) and were metabolically healthy or unhealthy. After 7.5 years, 24.3% of men and 41.9% of women in the metabolically healthy normal-weight group remained metabolically healthy (p p p p = 0.073). Conclusion: These data show that metabolically healthy status is a highly unstable condition in both normal-weight and OwOb individuals. The impairment of metabolic status was more frequent in men than in women. Lifestyle counseling produced beneficial effects in almost one-third of metabolically unhealthy OwOb women and in less than one-fifth of men.

Keywords

• overweight
• obesity
• metabolically healthy
• young
• hypertension