Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2021

Identifier

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247821; PMCID: PMC7920337

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To determine how baseline weight status contributes to differences in postmenopausal weight gain among non-Hispanic Blacks (NHBs) and non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs).

METHODS: Data were included from 70,750 NHW and NHB postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study (WHI OS). Body Mass Index (BMI) at baseline was used to classify women as having normal weight, overweight, obese class I, obese class II or obese class III. Cox proportional hazards was used to estimate the hazard of a 10% or more increase in weight from baseline.

RESULTS: In both crude and adjusted models, NHBs were more likely to experience ≥10% weight gain than NHWs within the same category of baseline weight status. Moreover, NHBs who were normal weight at baseline were most likely to experience ≥10% weight gain in both crude and adjusted models. Age-stratified results were consistent with overall findings. In all age categories, NHBs who were normal weight at baseline were most likely to experience ≥10% weight gain. Based on the results of adjusted models, the joint influence of NHB race/ethnicity and weight status on risk of postmenopausal weight gain was both sub-additive and sub-multiplicative.

CONCLUSION: NHBs are more likely to experience postmenopausal weight gain than NHWs, and the disparity in risk is most pronounced among those who are normal weight at baseline. To address the disparity in postmenopausal obesity, future studies should focus on identifying and modifying factors that promote weight gain among normal weight NHBs.

Journal Title

PLoS One

Volume

16

Issue

3

First Page

0247821

Last Page

0247821

Comments

Grant support

The Women’s Health Initiative program is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through contracts HHSN268201100046C, HHSN26801100001C, HHSN268201100002C, HHSN268201100003C, HHSN268201100004C, and HHSN271201100004C. CF and SC received salary support from the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute (5 R25 CA057730-24). CB received salary support from the RAND Corporation. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Publisher's Link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247821

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