Type 2, Second opinion
Type 2 diabetes, a condition widely thought of as a disease of the overweight and sedentary, also develops in people who aren’t overweight. And it may be deadlier in these normal-weight people, a new study shows.
In the study, which appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers reviewed data involving more than 2,500 people with Type 2 diabetes, some of whom were followed for decades. The scientists found that those who were of normal weight around the time of their diagnoses were twice as likely to die during the study period, compared with those who were overweight or obese.
The researchers could not explain why having a greater body mass index, or BMI, might protect someone with diabetes. But they did point out that some doctors may be prone to treating thin diabetics differently from their obese counterparts, and may be less likely to push them to make diet and exercise changes that could improve their survival.
“Normal-weight people may be treated less aggressively,” said Mercedes R Carnethon, an author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This really is an argument to treat a normal-weight person with diabetes as aggressively as you would treat an overweight or obese person with diabetes.”
The findings also provide evidence that patients with Type 2 diabetes may display what researchers call the obesity paradox, the observation that people with certain chronic diseases tend to have lower mortality rates if they carry excess pounds.
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