The effect of obesity on morbidity and mortality in childhood and middle age has been studied extensively, but there is still an ongoing debate about whether obesity poses a health risk to older adults. There is some evidence suggesting that obesity is not associated with mortality in older adults, and in fact, may confer some degree of protection. Questions about the effect of obesity in old age are particularly salient with respect to older women because the hormone changes that occur during menopause are associated with weight gain and changes in the distribution of adipose tissue.
The objective of this presentation is to investigate methodological explanations for the attenuated effect of obesity on mortality in older adults, using data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a large cohort study of 161,808 postmenopausal women in the United States. In addition, the research presented will focus on practical strategies to remediate key sources of bias affecting the obesity-mortality relationship in older adults, including exposure misclassification, selective attrition, and time-varying confounding.
