Obese Wives Raise Risk of Diabetes in Husbands

A new study has found that men who have obese wives are more likely to have diabetes, but women living with obese men are not. The sex-specific study focused on heterosexual relationships in which the couples lived together or were married and cohabiting. The study focused on spousal obesity.

Men married to obese women were 21 percent more likely to become type 2 diabetic.

The reason is related to poor eating habits, which are often shared by obese women and their husbands. Yet the reverse is not always true, which stumped scientists as to why. The study has resulted in a call for men aged 50 and over who are living with obese women to be screened for diabetes.

The study, conducted in England, was presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes at the group's annual meeting. The study also found that people over 55 with a diabetic partner also tend to be more obese than their peers.

The study's researchers were a team from Aarhus University in Denmark who examined 3,650 men and 3,478 women aged 50 or older from a nationally representative sample. Interviews were conducted every 2.5 years between 1998 and 2015. A mean case rate for diabetes for all participants was measured at 12.6 per thousand people among men and 8.6 among women. The team then examined the sexes separately and their lifestyles.

"This is the first study investigating the sex-specific effect of spousal obesity on diabetes risk,” said Dr Adam Hulman, who led the research. "Having an obese wife increases a man's risk of diabetes over and above the effect of his own obesity level, while among women, having an obese husband gives no additional diabetes risk beyond that of her own obesity level."

The study's authors say that recognizing this shared risk may help improve diabetes detection and help some people derail diabetes before it starts.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk