Abdominal obesity doubles risk of gall bladder surgery

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Women with waist measurements over 36 inches have double the risk of having gallstone problems.
In the US, there are more than 800,000 operations to remove gallstones every year. A team at the University of Kentucky has been looking at some of the underlying risk factors in gallstone disease. They monitored a group of more than 42,000 women who were part of the Nurses Health Study. All provided waist and hip measurements.

During monitoring from 1986 to 2000, 3197 of the women needed gallstone surgery. Those with a waistline of more than 36 inches were almost twice as likely to require surgery for gallstones as those whose waistlines were 26 or less. Waist to hip ratio was also a factor. Women whose waist hip ratio was 0.86 or more had 40 per cent higher risk of gallstone problems compared to those with a ratio of 0.7 or less. The reason for the ink between abdominal obesity and gallstones is not clear. However, abdominal fat is different from fat elsewhere in the body; it may have some specific effect on the gallbladder.

Source
Gut online 13th February 2006

Please take a moment to give us your comments. For questions about Health matters you may check our "Questions & Answers" Portal and Service.