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Clinical Summary

Sexual orientation identity and unhealthy body mass: is there a link?

Takeaway

  • Women who identify as lesbian or bisexual are at an increased risk of being overweight or obese than women who identify as heterosexual.
  • Men who identify as gay were at decreased risk of being overweight or obese.
  • Men who identified as gay or bisexual were at increased risk of being underweight.

Why this matters

  • No study has so far evaluated sexual orientation identity (SOI) and unhealthy body mass index (BMI) categories among adults in the UK population.

Study design

  • This individual participant data meta-analysis used pooled data from 12 data sets from 5 British cohort or cross-sectional health surveys to evaluate 93,429 adults with data on SOI, BMI and study covariates.
  • Funding: Medical Research Council.

Key results

  • Among population evaluated, 1.2% participants were identified as lesbian/gay, 0.9% as bisexual and 0.7% as others.
  • After adjustments for covariates, women identifying as lesbians (aOR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.16-1.72) and bisexual (aOR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.03-1.48) vs heterosexual women were at an increased risk of being overweight or obese.
  • However, men identifying as gay vs heterosexual men were significantly less likely to have an overweight/obese BMI (aOR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.61-0.85).
  • Men identified as gay (aOR, 3.12; 95% CI, 1.83-5.32) or bisexual (aOR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.17-4.52) were significantly more likely to be underweight than heterosexual men.
  • Women (aOR, 1.95; 95% CI, 1.07-3.56) and men (aOR, 3.95; 95% CI, 1.85-8.42) who were identified as ‘others’ were at an increased risk of being underweight.

Limitations

  • Cross-sectional nature of the survey data.
  • Small number of respondents.

References


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