Proposed approach for diagnosing obesity outperforms old method

A framework for diagnosing obesity that was proposed in 2025 incorporates waist circumference and related measures and distinguishes clinical from preclinical obesity on the basis of obesity-induced organ dysfunction. In an international multi-cohort study of 844,108 adults, this framework outperformed conventional body-mass-index-based criteria in diagnosing obesity and stratifying mortality risk. A combination of body and organ-function metrics does better at classifying obesity than does body mass index.