Obesity and infection: Research reveals a dangerous link

Experts have warned that people with obesity are 70 percent more likely to be hospitalized or die from an infectious disease, while those with morbid obesity have three times the risk.

They added that this trend could worsen in the coming decades if obesity rates continue to rise.

Obesity is known to greatly increase the risk of hospitalization or death from infectious diseases such as influenza , pneumonia, gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections, respiratory infections, and coronavirus.

The new study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, was based on global research involving more than 540,000 people, including more than 470,000 adults from the UK Biobank database .

Using risk estimates, the researchers concluded that obesity was associated with one in 10 infection-related deaths globally in 2023.

The likelihood of death varied between countries, but about one in six deaths in the United Kingdom and one in four deaths in the United States were due to this link.

Overall, obesity may be a major factor in about 600,000 of the 5.4 million deaths from infectious diseases in 2023, or 10.8 percent, according to the study.

In the United Kingdom, obesity-related deaths accounted for 7,300 out of 42,000 deaths that year, or 17.4 percent.