A Lancet study has found that obesity substantially raises the risk of severe illness or death from a wide range of infectious diseases, a pattern that the authors say could increase global infection-related hospitalisations and deaths as obesity rates rise. The researchers combined long-term data from more than 67,000 adults across two Finnish cohorts and over 470,000 adults in the UK Biobank, recording participants’ body mass index (BMI) at baseline and following them for an average of 13–14 years to track infection-related hospital admissions and deaths.
The analysis showed higher body weight was associated with greater risk for most infections studied, including influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections and lower respiratory tract infections. Obesity did not appear to increase the risk of severe HIV or tuberculosis in these cohorts. In the UK Biobank sample, people with a healthy BMI had about a 1.1% annual chance of experiencing a severe infection, compared with 1.8% per year for people with obesity-an increase that the authors describe as epidemiologically meaningful.
To estimate the global impact, the team applied their findings to Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data and concluded that obesity may have contributed to roughly 0.6 million of the 5.4 million infectious disease deaths worldwide in 2023-about 10.8%, or one in ten infection deaths. The burden varied by country: in the United States obesity was linked to about one in four infection-related deaths, in the United Kingdom about one in six, and in Vietnam roughly 1%.
The authors emphasise caution in interpreting the results. The study is observational and cannot establish cause and effect, and the Finnish cohorts and the UK Biobank are not fully representative of global populations, which may limit generalisability. Dr Sara Ahmadi-Abhari of Imperial College London, who led the GBD analyses, noted that global estimates help illustrate scale but come with inherent data limitations.
Experts in India say the findings are especially relevant locally. National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21) data show nearly a quarter of Indian adults are overweight or obese-24% of women and 23% of men-raising concern because Indians tend to develop diabetes and metabolic dysfunction at lower levels of obesity. “When obesity, diabetes, air pollution, overcrowding, and poor hygiene coexist-as they do in many parts of India-the infection risk is likely to be substantially higher than what Western cohorts estimate,” said Dr Anoop Misra of Fortis C-DOC, New Delhi. Dr Atul Kakar of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital added that obesity is linked to low-grade inflammation and impaired immunity across the gut, skin and respiratory system, which increases infection risk.
The study’s authors warn that rising obesity prevalence worldwide could lead to more infection-related hospitalisations and deaths, underscoring the need for public-health strategies that address obesity alongside infection control. UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Global Report 2025 also highlights the scale of the challenge: for the first time, obesity has overtaken underweight among school-aged children and adolescents, with roughly one in ten children-about 188 million-living with obesity.
Original Source: https://theprint.in/health/lancet-study-links-obesity-to-1-in-10-infection-deaths-globally-what-it-means-for-india/2849323/
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Publish Date: 2026-02-10 05:30:00
