Body size of adult women and men in a cross-sectional survey of the general population in Geneva: temporal trends, association with general state of health and reduction in height after the age of 50.

Julia Schäppi, Silvia Stringhini, Idris Guessous, Kaspar Staub, and Katarina L Matthes.
Body height in adult women and men in a cross-sectional population-based survey in Geneva: temporal trends, association with general health status and height loss after age 50.BMJ Open, July 2022, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053986.

Abstract

Background: On the one hand, trends in mean height in adulthood reflect changes in the standard of living and health status of a population and its subgroups; on the other hand, height, and height loss in older people in particular, are associated with health outcomes in distinct ways. For these aspects, there is virtually no information in Switzerland based on representative, measured body height data.

Design: Repeated cross-sectional study.

Setting: The study corresponds to an analysis of fully anonymised data from the representative general population study Bus Santé between 2005 and 2017.

Methods: Data from N=8686 people participating in the Bus Santé study were used in the trend analysis. Height was measured and socio-demographic information and self-assessed health status were collected by questionnaires. Follow-up measurements (mean: 7.1 years) of N=2112 participants were available to assess height loss after the age of 50.

Results: Women measured a mean of 166.2 cm (SD 6.5) and men 179.2 cm (SD 6.5). Among both men and women, higher socio-economic status was associated with greater average height. For people born from the 1970s onwards, the flattening of the increase in height appears to begin earlier in the sub-group with the highest level of education. The highest average height was measured for men and women from Central and Northern Europe, and the lowest for those from South America and Asia. The likelihood of participants rating their health as 'very good' increased with body size. Follow-up data showed that men lost -0.11 cm per year of follow-up (95% CI -0.12 to -0.10) compared with -0.17 cm (95% CI -0.18 to -0.15) for women.

Conclusions: The association between body size and health status is currently understudied. Monitoring changes in mean body height could indicate disparities in different population subgroups. Based on our study and a growing literature, we believe that the multidimensional role of body size should be better taken into account in clinical practice.

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