Obesity and Gastrointestinal Diseases

The prevalence of obesity in the Japanese population has been increasing dramatically in step with the Westernization of lifestyles and food ways. Our study demonstrated significant associations between obesity and a number of gastrointestinal disorders in a large sample population in Japan. We demonstrated that reflux esophagitis and hiatal hernia were strongly related to obesity (BMI > 25) in the Japanese. In particular, obesity with young male was a high risk for these diseases. On the other hand, it has been reported that obesity is also associated with Barrett’s esophagus and colorectal adenoma; however, obesity was not a risk factor for these diseases in our study. The difference of ethnicity of our subjects may partly explain why we found no data to implicate obesity as a risk factor for Barrett’s esophagus. Arterial sclerosis associated with advanced age and hyperglycemia was accompanied by an increased risk of colorectal adenoma.