SynthesisObesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity2014
Metabolically healthy obesity and risk of incident type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies.
Synthesis in Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 222 papers, 12 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
222 citing papers in PubMed, 12 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 466 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Lipedema: Progress, Challenges, and the Road Ahead.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Pooled it
- The association between metabolically healthy obesity and risk of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2025Pooled it
- Association of metabolic obesity phenotypes with risk of overall and site-specific cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies.British journal of cancer · 2024Pooled it
- Effects of probiotic/synbiotic supplementation on body weight in patients with diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analyses of randomized-controlled trials.BMC endocrine disorders · 2023Pooled it
- Relationship between different levels of the Mexican food environment and dietary intake: a qualitative systematic review.Public health nutrition · 2020Pooled it
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung function and risk of type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Management of overweight and obesity in primary care-A systematic overview of international evidence-based guidelines.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2019Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Risk factors for type 2 diabetes mellitus: An exposure-wide umbrella review of meta-analyses.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Trial
- Normal weight obesity and the risk of diabetes in Chinese people: a 9-year population-based cohort study.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Semaphorin 3 C is a Novel Adipokine Representing Exercise-Induced Improvements of Metabolism in Metabolically Healthy Obese Young Males.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Effectiveness of vitamin D therapy in improving metabolomic biomarkers in obesity phenotypes: Two randomized clinical trials.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2018Trial
- Metabolic phenotypes of obesity: frequency, correlates and change over time in a cohort of postmenopausal women.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2017Trial
- Genetic and molecular signatures highlight diverse pathways linking obesity to type 2 diabetes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Sex-Dependent and Asymmetric Associations of Bodyweight History in the Twenties with Later HbA1c Trajectories in a Japanese Occupational Cohort.Nutrients · 2026Article
162 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The risk of type 2 diabetes among obese adults who are metabolically healthy has not been established. We systematically searched Medline (1946-August 2013) and Embase (1947-August 2013) for prospective studies of type 2 diabetes incidence (defined by blood glucose levels or self-report) among metabolically healthy obese adults (defined by body mass index [BMI] and normal cardiometabolic clustering, insulin profile or risk score) aged ≥18 years at baseline. We supplemented the analysis with an original effect estimate from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), with metabolically healthy obesity defined as BMI ≥ 30 kg m(-2) and <2 of hypertension, impaired glycaemic control, systemic inflammation, adverse high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and adverse triglycerides. Estimates from seven published studies and ELSA were pooled using random effects meta-analyses (1,770 healthy obese participants; 98 type 2 diabetes cases). The pooled adjusted relative risk (RR) for incident type 2 diabetes was 4.03 (95% confidence interval = 2.66-6.09) in healthy obese adults and 8.93 (6.86-11.62) in unhealthy obese compared with healthy normal-weight adults. Although there was between-study heterogeneity in the size of effects (I(2) = 49.8%; P = 0.03), RR for healthy obesity exceeded one in every study, indicating a consistently increased risk across study populations. Metabolically healthy obese adults show a substantially increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with metabolically healthy normal-weight adults. Prospective evidence does not indicate that healthy obesity is a harmless condition.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.