In 2024, Belén Torres and a team from Spain reviewed six clinical trials from 2012–2022 involving overweight or obese adults. They studied how probiotics, like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus strains, affect body weight, BMI, and fat mass without dieting, using data from PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane databases.

A 2025 analysis within the Malmö Preventive Project (1,792 adults, ~13 years follow-up) found that a higher waist‑to‑height ratio (WtHR)—not BMI—was strongly linked to incident heart failure.