I had never considered the economic impact of our obesity epidemic in the U.S. on the clinical lab industry until I recently came across an article on the web that discussed the "fat profits" associated with obesity (see: Obesity trend an opportunity for fat profits, says U.S. brokerage Merrill Lynch). Below is an excerpt from it:
Obesity is a health epidemic rippling across affluent countries, but it's also an emerging investment opportunity, according to a leading American brokerage. Merrill Lynch, which released a report this week called "The battle of the bulge: the emerging obesity epidemic," says that 1.6 billion people around the world were considered overweight in 2005, with 400 million of those singled out as obese. Those stats are expected to increase to 2.3 billion and 700 million by 2015. The investment opportunities in the obesity fight include companies providing services or products in the areas of weight loss, exercise, medication and surgical procedures aimed at treating high blood-pressure or related problems, heart and liver problems, sleep apnea and diabetes. Cardiovascular and cholesterol drugs account for about 40 per cent of total prescription drug spending in Canada, according to The Canadian Rx Atlas.
To get more data about the prevalence of obesity in the U.S., I turned to an article published by Thomson Healthcare (see: Obesity in the Workforce). Below are excerpts from it:
The obesity epidemic in America has been widely documented. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 32% of adults in the United States are overweight and 34% are obese....It is well established that obesity is a risk factor for metabolic and circulatory conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
(The exhibit below downloaded from the Thomson Healthcare web site)
Let's just chew on these data briefly. In total, about 66% of all adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese. The vast majority of lab tests are performed on patients being treated for some disease, as opposed to those being tested for wellness surveillance. Diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease would certainly account for the majority of patients with chronic diseases and, as noted in the graph above, these conditions are more prevalent among the overweight and obese. I am just guessing here, but, on the basis of these data, I would suggest that perhaps 80-90% of all specimens arriving in our labs are drawn from overweight or obese patients.
I am not quite sure what to do with this conclusion right now but I certainly would not be in any hurry to pull the soft drinks and cookies out of our blood drawing centers.
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