Obesity and periodontal disease

Obesity is an excess amount of body fat in proportion to lean body mass, to the extent that health is impaired (3). The most commonly used measure of body fat is the body mass index, which is defined as a person’s weight, in kilograms, divided by the square of his/her height in meters. The World Health Organization and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) define overweight as a body mass index of 25–29.9 and obesity as a body mass index of ‡30 (50, 80). Childhood obesity is defined as a body mass index for age and gender that is greater than the 95th percentile (6). The full classification for overweight and obesity, developed by the National Institutes of Health through an expert panel that reviewed data from approximately 394 studies, is shown in Table 1. Waist circumference is also an important indicator of visceral abdominal fat. Evidence suggests that abdominal fat carries a higher health risk than peripheral fat, and that the visceral fat component has the strongest correlation with increased risk. A highrisk waist circumference is considered to be ‡88 cm for women and ‡102 cm for men (50).