A new report has suggested that obesity alone may no longer be linked to a high risk of death in women.

Research published in the November 2010 issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), shows that cardiovascular fitness may be the key predictor of health levels and overall risk for death.

Researchers found that fit women with high BMI values, body fat percentage, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio had no greater risk of death than their fit counterparts with normal adiposity values.

The results suggest that fitness is a stronger predictor than thinness for predicting a long and healthy life.

Dr. Stephen Farrell, lead author of the study and science officer at The Cooper Institute, said: "In other studies, failure to measure cardio-respiratory fitness levels may be due in part to an underlying assumption that all overweight individuals are unfit and at high risk for mortality.

"This study makes clear that this assumption is not always valid."

The study, titled Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Adiposity, and All-Cause Mortality in Women measured body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, waist-to-hip ratio, waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio and cardiorespiratory fitness in 11,335 women from 1970 to 2005.

Participants were divided into groups based on their cardiorespiratory fitness levels - low fit equals the lowest 20 percent; moderate fit equals the middle 40 percent; high fit equals the highest 40 percent. Researchers tracked death rates among all participants, and 292 deaths from all causes occurred during the study period.