Obesity may dramatically cut US life expectancy in the coming years as obesity-related health problems including heart disease, diabetes and kidney failure would cause more early deaths, researchers said in a report Wednesday.

Obesity among US adults rose by 50 percent per decade during the 1980s and 1990s, the researchers, led by longevity expert Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois in Chicago, said in a report which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine. Now about one third of Americans are obese.

They believed that within half a century obesity would likely reduce the US average life span of 77.6 years by at least two to five years.

In addition, obesity is affecting at least 15 percent of US school children.

The researchers indicated that obesity should be included as a factor in the establishment of US life expectancy, adding that the US Social Security Administration projection that steady increases will lead US life expectancy to reach mid-80s later this century is flawed.

Obesity would not only reverse the mostly steady increase in American life expectancy that has occurred in the past two centuries, but also have tremendous social and economic consequences, the report said,

Obesity may inadvertently "save" the Social Security plan by causing more early deaths, but obesity-related health problems would cost more and result in higher death rates, they said.

In a Journal editorial, Samuel Preston of the University of Pennsylvania said the Olshansky team's projections may be "excessively gloomy" because many Americans have adopted healthier lifestyles.

Source: Xinhua