Millions more Brits could be offered a "miracle" weight loss jab for free on the NHS. Proposals to overhaul the BMI system so it is better suited for the 21st Century for diagnosing obesity could see millions more Brits offered weight loss jabs.
Under current BMI guidelines, a person is considered obese when they reach a BMI of 30. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, a coalition of experts from the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) said: "In many settings, the diagnosis of obesity is still based solely on body mass index (BMI) cut-off values, and does not reflect the role of adipose tissue distribution and function in the severity of the disease.
"Moreover, the indications for using the different therapeutic approaches now available for obesity management remain mostly based on anthropometric measurements, rather than on a more complete clinical evaluation of the individual."
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The experts proposed that people should be offered weight loss medications if they have a BMI of over 25 and a waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) of above 0.5. "In current practice, the strict application of these evidence-based criteria precludes the use of obesity medications or metabolic and bariatric procedures in patients with a substantial burden of obesity disease, but low BMI values," they explained.
"The basis for this change is the recognition that BMI alone is insufficient as a diagnostic criterion, and that body fat distribution has a substantial effect on health," the obesity experts wrote.
"More specifically, the accumulation of abdominal fat is associated with an increased risk of developing cardiometabolic complications and is a stronger determinant of disease development than BMI, even in individuals with a BMI level below the standard cut-off values for obesity diagnosis (BMI of 30)."
"This statement may also be seen as a call to pharmacological companies and regulatory authorities to use inclusion criteria that are more adherent to the clinical staging of obesity and less to traditional BMI cut-offs when designing future clinical trials with obesity medications," they wrote.
