Pongiglione Benedetta, Ploubidis George B, Dowd Jennifer B
Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management (CERGAS), Bocconi University, Milano, Italy.
Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2022 May 27;77(Suppl_2):S167-S176. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbac023.
Explanations for lagging life expectancy in the United States compared to other high-income countries have focused largely on "deaths of despair," but attention has also shifted to the role of stalling improvements in cardiovascular disease and the obesity epidemic. Using harmonized data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we assess differences in self-reported and objective measures of health, among older adults in the United States and England and explore whether the differences in body mass index (BMI) documented between the United States and England explain the U.S. disadvantage. Older adults in the United States have a much higher prevalence of diabetes, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and high inflammation (C-reactive protein) compared to English adults. While the distribution of BMI is shifted to the right in the United States with more people falling into extreme obesity categories, these differences do not explain the cross-country differences in measured biological risk. We conclude by considering how country differences in health may have affected the burden of coronavirus disease 2019 mortality in both countries.
与其他高收入国家相比，美国预期寿命滞后的原因主要集中在“绝望死亡”上，但人们的注意力也已转向心血管疾病改善停滞和肥胖流行所起的作用。利用来自美国健康与退休研究以及英国老龄化纵向研究的协调数据，我们评估了美国和英国老年人自我报告的健康状况与客观健康指标之间的差异，并探讨美国和英国之间记录的体重指数（BMI）差异是否能解释美国的劣势。与英国成年人相比，美国老年人患糖尿病、高密度脂蛋白胆固醇水平低和炎症水平高（C反应蛋白）的患病率要高得多。虽然美国的BMI分布向右偏移，有更多人属于极端肥胖类别，但这些差异并不能解释两国在测量的生物风险方面的差异。我们通过考虑两国在健康方面的差异如何可能影响2019年冠状病毒病的死亡负担来得出结论。
