Why the study?
Rising obesity in aging East Asian populations threatens healthcare systems, making the understanding of factors contributing to obesity and metabolically healthy obesity important for mitigating long-term burdens.
This review highlights the factors contributing to obesity and metabolically healthy obesity in East Asia, emphasizing the need to understand these mechanisms to mitigate the burden of obesity-related care.
Emphasizes region-specific obesity drivers in East Asia; leaves open targeted interventions and mechanistic trials before clinical adoption.
The East Asian region (China, Japan, and South Korea) is comprised of almost 1.5 billion people and recent industrialization has brought with it a pandemic of rising obesity, even in children. As these countries are rapidly aging and functioning at sub-replacement birthrates, the burgeoning costs of obesity-related care may threaten socialized healthcare systems and quality of life. However, a condition called metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) has been found to be without immediate cardiopulmonary or diabetic risk. Thus, maintenance of the MHO condition for the obese in East Asia could buffer the burden of long-term obesity care on medical systems and knowledge of the biochemical, genetic, and physiological milieu associated with it could also provide new targets for intervention. Diverse physiological, psychological, environmental, and social factors play a role in obesogenesis and the transition of MHO to a metabolically unhealthy obesity. This review will give a broad survey of the various causes of obesity and MHO, with special emphasis on the East Asian population and studies from that region.
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Mathis et al. (2022) studied this question.
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