The associations between smoking and obesity in northeast China: a quantile regression analysis

Obesity is a risk factors of chronic diseases, and smoking is associated with both chronic diseases and obesity. There were some controversies about the associations between smoking and obesity. Thus, our study aimed to explore the associations of smoking with obesity, using body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) as obesity indices in northeast China. We enrolled a sample of 16,412 participants in Jilin province aged 18–79 in this study, which were derived from a cross-sectional survey in 2012. We used quantile regression (QR) models to identify the associations of smoking with obesity in different quantiles of BMI (or WC) by genders. The differences of BMI and WC by genders were statistically significant (p < 0.05). In conclusion, compared with current non-smokers, current smokers had lower BMI but higher WC. As increasing of WC, the association of WC with smoking was getting stronger, especially in females.