Weight linked to gall stones

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 19

Weight linked to gall stones

NZPA-Reuter New York

Overweight women are six times more likely to develop gall stones than women of normal weight, a new study has found.

While the association between obesity and gall stones has long been known, a study outlined in the “New England Journal of Medicine” shows a clear increase in risk even for women who are only slightly overweight. In the United States, nearly 500,000 gall stones are removed annually and between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of the stones are removed from people between the ages of 30 and 59.

The stones form in the gall bladder when cholesterol, supersaturated with bile from the liver, crystallises. They occur in twice as many women as men.

The new study, part of the Nurses’ Health Study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, assessed the risk of getting gall stones in 88,837 nurses betwen the ages of 34 and 59 with no history of the condition.

Malcolm Maclure.of the Harvard School of public Health in Boston, . who headed the study, said women who were only slightly overweight were more likely to get the stones.