A high BMI is not necessarily an indicator of early mortality risk, according to a large study published in the July 5 PLoS One. Some previous studies had suggested that body mass index (BMI) alone does not predict health risk, but those studies used data from as far back as 1960 and samples that were predominately non-Hispanic White adults. This study examined a diverse sample of over 550,000 adults from 1999 to 2018. Researchers found no association between increased mortality and a BMI up to 34.9 in those participants 65 years of age and older and a BMI up to 27.4 in younger adults. The findings support new American Medical Association guidelines that recommend that BMI be considered as a health measure only in combination with other risk measures, including waist circumference, body adiposity index, relative fat mass, and genetic/metabolic factors.