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New clinical definition versus BMI in diagnosing obesity

The Brief · written from 4 sources

A large international study published in Nature found that a new diagnostic definition of obesity outperforms BMI in identifying differences in health and prognosis, including mortality risk.
The new framework was proposed in 2025 by the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission and goes beyond BMI by incorporating measures such as body fat distribution and organ function.
The framework distinguishes between clinical and pre-clinical obesity, and Live Science reports that more people could count as obese under the proposed definition.

Why it matters

Obesity diagnosis drives clinical decisions, so a definition that better predicts health outcomes than BMI could change who is identified as at risk and who receives care.

Who’s affected

clinicians and researchers who diagnose or treat obesity
people whose obesity status could change under a new definition

#obesity
#bmi
#clinical-definition
#metabolic-health
#nature-study

In 2025, the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission proposed a new diagnostic framework for obesity that went beyond BMI alone to incorporate other metrics such as body fat distribution and organ function, and which distinguished between clinical and pre-clinical obesity…

Read the full story at sciencemediacentre.org ↗