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As U.S. struggles with obesity epidemic, new study will look at patterns of weight, activity
August 13, 2010
Mei Sui
Arnold School of Public Health researcher Dr. Mei Sui has launched a study on the patterns of weight and activity change in adults, an effort that may offer clues to the causes of the epidemic of obesity in the United States and elsewhere.
Sui, a research assistant professor in the Department of Exercise Science, will use a two-year, $217,500 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to analyze patterns of weight and activity change in a group of 12,199 men and women aged 30 to 83 years.
All of the subjects have been participants in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study (ACLS), based at the Cooper Institute in Dallas. Sui became acquainted with the ACLS study when she joined the institute in 2004 and studied with Dr. Steve Blair, a world-renowned expert on physical activity and now an Arnold School exercise science professor who also has an academic appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
Sui said the patterns of weight change over time, and the role of changing patterns of physical activity, especially in relation to weight change, have not been studied extensively.
Fortunately the ACLS makes that examination possible because it has data for a large number of patients. The data are based on three or more clinical examinations in which patients were given physical exams, completed self-reported questionnaires and participated in exercise tests.
The result is a timeline of objective data on weight and activity over 35 years from 1970 to 2005.
The cause of obesity is a “very complicated issue,” Sui said.
Conventional wisdom about adult weight loss/gain is that people tend to gain weight up to about age 50, maintain a plateau until about age 60 and gradually lose weight afterward.
The trouble is that there are published studies that contradict the conventional wisdom, leading Sui and others to look deeper into “what really is happening with weight and physical activity.”
In 1995, Sui earned a medical degree from Qingdao University Medical College in her native China. She earned a master’s degree in pathology in 1998 from Peking Union Medical College.
She emigrated to the United States and earned a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After her stint at the Cooper Institute, she joined the Arnold School faculty in 2007.
