The criteria of the identification of metabolic obesity among people with normal body weight and their use in everyday practice

Abstract

Obesity and the metabolic syndrome caused by it constitute one of the biggest health issues of the 21st century. However, a problem of “a concealed form of obesity” — metabolic obesity with a normal body weight, which manifests clinically through the occurrence of metabolism disorders related to obesity among people with a normal body mass index — was pointed out in the 1980s. This affliction entails similar health consequences and causes many more problems in diagnosis and early treatment because a lack of obesity does not make doctors search for the traits of metabolic syndrome among seemingly healthy patients. The aim of this study is to present a proposition of diagnostic criteria for this disease in the historical perspective and to consider the possibilities of their use in everyday clinic practice.