ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Clinical Nutrition
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1607507
Underweight was associated with increased mortality in adults with latent tuberculosis infection Short title: Underweight increased mortality of LTBI
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Chengdu Fifth People's Hospital, Chengdu, China., Chengdu, China
- 2Department of Geriatric Intensive Care Unit, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China., Chengdu, China
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Objective Latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI) is a reservoir for active TB. Although body mass index (BMI) predicts LTBI progression and influences active TB outcomes, its association with mortality in LTBI patients remains unclear. We therefore investigated this relationship in a US cohort.Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011-2012 was utilized. Survival differences across BMI categories were assessed with Kaplan-Meier curves and multivariable Cox regression. The Restricted Cubic Spline (RCS) analysis modeled the nonlinear relationship between BMI and mortality risk.Results Among 700 LTBI participants analyzed, multivariable Cox regression identified underweight individuals as having higher mortality risk than normalweight counterparts (adjusted HR=2.77, 95% CI 1.06-7.22, p=0.04). No significant mortality associations were observed for obese or overweight participants across both crude and adjusted models (all p>0.05). RCS analysis demonstrated a Ushaped pattern between BMI and mortality, with minimum mortality risk at BMI 27.3kg/m 2 (p for nonlinearity=0.0012).In LTBI adults, underweight status independently predicted increased mortality risk, while overweight or obesity showed no association. RCS analysis confirmed a U-shaped BMImortality relationship with optimal survival at 27.3 kg/m².
Keywords: BMI, Underweight, latent tuberculosis infection, Mortality, RCS
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liao, LIU and Qi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Min Qi, Department of Geriatric Intensive Care Unit, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China., Chengdu, China
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