Baseline Participant Characteristics for Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk Study

Baseline characteristics for 136,498 adult participants from the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The dataset includes BMI data from 1990-1999 used to analyze long-term excess weight exposure and cardiovascular event risk starting in 2000. It was authored by Alexander Turchin and shared under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between baseline BMI and annualized cumulative excess BMI exposure for cardiovascular risk prediction.
• Model time-to-event for myocardial infarction and stroke using participant age and gender subgroups.
• Investigate hazard ratios (HR) for cardiovascular risk across quartiles of cumulative excess BMI exposure.
• Compare cardiovascular risk associations between younger (<35, 35-50) and older (>50, >65) age groups.

Strengths

• Large cohort of 136,498 participants provides substantial statistical power.
• Clear temporal coverage from 1990-1999 for baseline data with outcome follow-up from 2000.
• Includes key calculated metrics like mean baseline BMI (27.2 kg/m²) and mean annualized cumulative excess BMI exposure (3.9 kg/m²).

Limitations

• Dataset is very small (9.5 KB), likely containing only summary statistics, not individual-level records.
• Limited to participants with BMI > 25 kg/m² from two specific US-based professional cohorts, reducing generalizability.
• Outcome data (cardiovascular events) begins in 2000, creating a potential lag between exposure measurement and event tracking.

Provenance

Source

Secondary analysis of prospective cohort data from Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

Collection Method

Clinical study analysis extracting and calculating baseline characteristics and exposure metrics.

Time Range

Baseline exposure period: 1990-1999. Outcome tracking begins: 2000.

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026, but underlying study data covers 1990-1999.

Geography

Participants from Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, likely United States.