Obesity linked to severe influenza

THE overweight and obese are at much greater risk of getting a severe bout of the flu that will land them in hospital, a large Australian study has found.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales say the obese appear to be just as vulnerable to the seasonal flu as those with cardiovascular disease and diabetes and must get their flu shot.

Using the Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study, the researchers examined the health records of nearly 250,000 NSW adults from 2006 to 2015 to investigate if there was an association between body mass index, a general measure of obesity, and flu diagnoses.

“We essentially found that people who were considered either overweight or obese had a higher risk of having a laboratory confirmed flu diagnosis,” said lead researcher Associate Professor Better Liu, a medical epidemiologist at UNSW.

The more overweight the person was the greater their risk of flu and flu-related hospitalisation. For every five-unit BMI increase above 22.5 there was a 15 per cent increase in risk of having a diagnosis of influenza and 42 per cent increase in hospitalisation.

The findings are published in the International Journal of Obesity.

It’s thought that carrying excess weight impairs the immune system’s response to influenza infection, write the authors. AAP