
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990                   TAG: 9003290248
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

OBESITY, HEART ATTACKS LINKED

Being overweight causes about 40 percent of the heart attacks and other cases of heart disease among all women, a rate that rises to 70 percent among obese women, according to a new report being published today. Fat's effect is far greater than experts had thought.

The study also found that women who weigh 30 percent more than their ideal weight, according to standard height-weight tables, more than triple their risk of having a heart attack.

The results of the study of more than 115,000 American nurses suggest that for women - and probably also for men - being overweight is almost as dangerous for the heart as smoking, said Meir J. Stampfer, an associate physician at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and one of the report's authors.

One in five adult Americans, or 34 million people, are more than 20 percent heavier than the weight that is considered desirable according to standard tables. Forty-five percent of women between the ages of 35 and 64 are overweight, and therefore are at increased risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death in both sexes, according to the study, which was published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Stampfer said previous heart-disease studies have tended to underestimate the importance of being overweight because they counted it only when it was not associated with other risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Those conditions are caused or worsened by being overweight.

by CNB