Publications

Background & Aim: Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) is an important outcome that reflects the impact of chronic diseases on patients’ wellbeing. There is a paucity of studies on HRQoL and obesity in Arab-speaking countries. Therefore we aimed to investigate this outcome in this population. Methods: The HRQoL was assessed by the validated Arabic version of the ORWELL 97 questionnaire in 116 seeking-treatment patients with obesity referred to the Nutritional and Weight management outpatient clinic of Beirut Arab University (BAU) in Lebanon, matched by age and gender to 116 normal-weight participants. Results: Patients with obesity displayed higher total ORWELL 97 scores when compared with normal-weight controls (52.16±33.34 vs. 13.04±11.36, p<0.001), and linear regression analysis showed that the increase of Body Mass Index (BMI) among patients with obesity is associated with an increase of ORWELL 97 scores (β= 1.790, 95% CI= 0.808-2.772, p<0.001). Moreover, the logistic regression analysis showed that regardless the class of obesity, the only one-unit increase in BMI may increase the odds of scoring above 71.75 increased by nearly 11% (OR, 95% CI= 1.110, 1.003-1.229, p=0.04), which is considered indicative of a clinically significant impairment of HRQoL, especially in those with lower social status (i.e. lower education and unemployed). Conclusions: Our findings are considered new in an Arab population, and showed that obesity impairs HRQoL in treatment-seeking patients, where higher BMI is associated with more impairment in HRQoL. Moreover, interestingly an only one-unit increase in BMI dramatically increases the risk of HRQoL impairment to become clinically significant. Future studies are needed on larger scale in different Arab countries, to identify factors that are mostly associated with HRQoL, and to detect also changes in the latter in association with obesity treatment.