ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1609325
This article is part of the Research TopicHealth Promotion Through The Life Stages: from Newborn to the ElderlyView all articles
The relationship between early adulthood obesity and sarcopenic obesity among middle-aged and elderly adults in the United States.
Provisionally accepted
- Qinhuangdao Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qinhuangdao, China
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Objective: The purpose of this study was to observe the relationship between early adulthood obesity and sarcopenic obesity (SO) among middle-aged and elderly adults in the United States. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on United States adults aged 50-69 years. Data were extracted from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2006, and 2011–2018 cycles. The levels of height and weight at aged 25 years were obtained. Body mass index (BMI) at aged 25 years (BMI25) was calculated. Healthy weight, overweight and obesity at aged 25 years (healthy weight25, overweight25 and obesity25) were defined as BMI25 18.5 to less than 25kg/m2, 25 to less than 30kg/m2 and 30kg/m2 or greater. SO was defined by appendicular skeletal muscle mass divided by weight (ASM/Wt) and percentage of fat mass (FM (%)). Results: The prevalences of SO were 5.4%, 8.5%, and 16.5% in adults with healthy weight25, overweight25, and obesity25 group. After control for confounding factors, the prevalences of SO in adults with overweight25 group and obesity25 group were 1.161 (95%CI：0.898～1.500，P=0.254) times and 2.286 (95%CI：1.651～3.165，P<0.001) times than adults with healthy weight25 group. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that early adulthood obesity was closely associated with an increased risk of sarcopenic obesity among middle-aged and elderly adults.
Keywords: sarcopenic obesity, early adulthood obesity, Middle-aged and elderly, United States, NHANES
Received: 10 Apr 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng, Zhou, Wang, Wang and Xu. 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: Jianghong Xu, Qinhuangdao Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qinhuangdao, China
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