This is a very surprising result, and it's hard to know how to interpret this with just the abstract and not a full paper. They used a survey where data collection started in 2003, well before intermittent fasting was all that popular. So my first question is what fraction of people fasting for 16+ hours per day were doing it intentionally vs. unintentionally. It's well known that loss of appetite is a poor prognostic factor for people with end-stage diseases. There's also the question of what proportion of people were involuntarily fasting due to lack of access to food. So if the study includes people who are unintentionally fasting, that's a major confounder.
This is a very surprising result, and it's hard to know how to interpret this with just the abstract and not a full paper. They used a survey where data collection started in 2003, well before intermittent fasting was all that popular. So my first question is what fraction of people fasting for 16+ hours per day were doing it intentionally vs. unintentionally. It's well known that loss of appetite is a poor prognostic factor for people with end-stage diseases. There's also the question of what proportion of people were involuntarily fasting due to lack of access to food. So if the study includes people who are unintentionally fasting, that's a major confounder.