title: Body weight, pre-existing disease, and all-cause mortality in a cohort of male employees in the German construction industry.
abstract: The impact of body weight on all-cause mortality is subject to ongoing debate. We assessed the relation between body mass index (BMI) and all-cause mortality in a cohort of 8043 male employees in the German construction industry who underwent detailed occupational health examinations at ages 25-64 and who were followed for all cause mortality over an average period of 4.5 years. Overall, there was a negative, graded relation between BMI and all-cause mortality, which persisted after controlling for multiple covariates including age and cigarette smoking, and after excluding the initial two years of follow-up. There was a strong positive cross-sectional relationship between BMI and a medical diagnosis of diabetes, hypertension, and ischemic heart disease at the baseline examination. While BMI showed a strong negative relation with all-cause mortality among men with such diseases, the association was much weaker and non-monotonic for mean free of these diseases. Our results underline the importance of preexisting diseases for the prognostic value of body weight.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, University of Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Brenner
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Arndt
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rothenbacher
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schuberth
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fraisse
authors.forename: T M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Fliedner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D015331:Cohort Studies; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D005858:Germany; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D012307:Risk Factors