Medical Training for Health

Men who are overweight or obese are more likely to need a hip replacement for osteoarthritis than men with normal weight, according to a study of the Lund University Hospital in Sweden published in the online edition of the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases’.

People who are overweight are more prone to osteoarthritis of the knee but this is the first study to show that being overweight is a risk factor for osteoarthritis of the hip in men and not women.

The researchers compared body mass index (BMI) of 1473 people of Iceland who had undergone a hip or knee replacement with 1,103 people who passed through the joint replacement surgery. All were born between 1910 and 1939.

The results showed that women who were overweight, with BMIs above 25, were more prone to hip replacement than those with normal weight, but men do. Men who were obese, with BMIs above 30, were 70 percent more likely to have to undergo a hip replacement surgery.

The people of both sexes who were overweight were much more likely to have undergone a knee replacement surgery and more overweight the greater this probability. Men who were obese were five times more likely to have had a knee replacement and women were four times more likely.

The authors said the study supports a positive association between high BMI and total knee replacement in both sexes, but in regard to total hip replacements, the association with BMI seems to be weaker and possibly insignificant in the case of women.

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