Taller men at higher blood clot risk

TROMSO, Norway, April 29 (UPI) -- Men who are tall and obese have a greater risk of blood clots that can kill them suddenly, researchers in Norway say.

Senior author Sigrid K. Braekkan of the Hematological Research Group at the University of Tromso in Norway used data involved 26,714 adults 25-97 from the Norwegian town of Tromso. The researchers tracked the study participants for a median of 12.5 years from 1994 to 2007. During the study period, 461 venous thromboembolism -- a blood clot in the lung often caused by a blood clot in a vein, especially a vein in the leg or hip area.

The researchers found venous thromboembolism were more then five times higher in obese men who are almost 6 feet or taller compared with short men -- about 5-foot-8 or shorter -- men of normal weight. Tall men of normal weight were 2.57 times more likely to have a venous thromboembolism, while short obese men had 2.11 times higher risk of venous thromboembolism.

"We believe that we observed the increased risk in tall and normal-weight men, but not women, because most women do not get sufficiently tall," Braekkan says in a statement. "The risk may be present in very tall women, but there were too few to investigate this properly."

The finding are published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association.