Sun JK, Tian H. Obesity paradox in patients with community-acquired pneumonia: Have you fully considered the confounding factors? World J Clin Cases 2025; 13(9): 97915 [DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i9.97915]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Hui Tian, Chief Physician, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Liaocheng People’s Hospital, Dongchang Road, Liaocheng 252000, Shandong Province, China. tianhui@lchospital.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Chemistry, Medicinal
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Mar 26, 2025; 13(9): 97915 Published online Mar 26, 2025. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i9.97915
Obesity paradox in patients with community-acquired pneumonia: Have you fully considered the confounding factors?
Jin-Ke Sun, Hui Tian
Jin-Ke Sun, Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan 250000, Shandong Province, China
Hui Tian, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Liaocheng People’s Hospital, Liaocheng 252000, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Sun JK designed and wrote this article; Tian H guided and critically reviewed the main content of the article; and all authors thoroughly reviewed and endorsed the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hui Tian, Chief Physician, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Liaocheng People’s Hospital, Dongchang Road, Liaocheng 252000, Shandong Province, China. tianhui@lchospital.cn
Received: June 12, 2024 Revised: November 12, 2024 Accepted: December 2, 2024 Published online: March 26, 2025 Processing time: 182 Days and 19.5 Hours
Abstract
There exists a notion that there is an obesity paradox in the prognosis of community-acquired pneumonia. In other words, obese individuals with community-acquired pneumonia have a better prognosis. The study by Wang et al supports this claim, but we believe that the obesity paradox should not be proposed hastily as it is influenced by numerous subjective and objective confounding factors.
Core Tip: There exists a notion that there is an obesity paradox in the prognosis of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Wang et al’s research findings substantiate this statement. However, our analysis reveals that this notion is influenced by numerous confounding factors, including age, chronic pulmonary diseases, and pathogens. Wang et al’s research lacked rigor in defining obesity and insufficient data on confounding factors. Thus, we recommend future research to categorize CAP patients more precisely and consider multiple factors to elucidate the exact role of body mass index in CAP prognosis.
