Specchia Maria Lucia, Veneziano Maria Assunta, Cadeddu Chiara, Ferriero Anna Maria, Mancuso Agostino, Ianuale Carolina, Parente Paolo, Capri Stefano, Ricciardi Walter
1 Department of Public Health - Section of Hygiene, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy.
1 Department of Public Health - Section of Hygiene, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy
Eur J Public Health. 2015 Apr;25(2):255-62. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cku170. Epub 2014 Oct 14.
Obesity represents an important public health issue. An assessment of its costs would be useful to provide recommendations for policy and decision-making strategies. The aims of our study were to carry out a systematic review to assess the economic burden of adult obesity in terms of direct and indirect costs and to perform a quality appraisal of the analysed studies.
A literature search was carried out on PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane Library to retrieve cost-of-illness (COI) analyses focused on adult (aged 18 years or more) overweight or obese people and published up to 2013. COI analyses that considered direct and indirect costs were included. Each included manuscript was independently appraised by three groups of researchers on the basis of the British Medical Journal Drummond's checklist.
Approximately 2044 articles were initially retrieved, and 17 were included in the current review. The included studies showed a medium-high-quality level. The available studies seemed to be heterogeneous both in terms of methodology and results reporting. However, as many studies have been conducted from the payer perspective, just direct medical costs can be considered exhaustive. As only three studies included considered also indirect costs, there is no strong evidence to give a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon also from the societal perspective.
The review confirmed that obesity absorbs a huge amount of health-care resources. Further research is therefore needed to better understand the economic impact and to identify and promote public health strategies to tackle obesity.
肥胖是一个重要的公共卫生问题。评估其成本对于为政策和决策策略提供建议很有帮助。我们研究的目的是进行一项系统综述，以评估成人肥胖在直接和间接成本方面的经济负担，并对所分析的研究进行质量评估。
在PubMed、Scopus和Cochrane图书馆进行文献检索，以检索截至2013年发表的、聚焦于18岁及以上成人超重或肥胖人群的疾病成本（COI）分析。纳入考虑直接和间接成本的COI分析。每组三名研究人员根据《英国医学杂志》德拉蒙德清单对每篇纳入的手稿进行独立评估。
最初检索到约2044篇文章，本综述纳入17篇。纳入的研究显示质量水平为中高。现有研究在方法和结果报告方面似乎存在异质性。然而，由于许多研究是从支付方角度进行的，仅直接医疗成本可被视为详尽无遗。由于仅三项纳入研究也考虑了间接成本，因此从社会角度也没有强有力的证据来全面描述这一现象。
该综述证实肥胖消耗了大量医疗保健资源。因此，需要进一步研究以更好地理解经济影响，并确定和推广应对肥胖的公共卫生策略。
