Hi, how to understand "but otherwise"' in the following sentence? Does it mean "and" "besides"? So in this context, it means "healthy and obese"?🙏🙏

"Researchers assigned 57 obese but otherwise healthy people to one of these two groups or a control group, in which people were simply weighted at the end of each month."

I also notice "obese" in here is a noun, how could it happen, or is it an omitted usage?🙏🙏

Question

Hi, how to understand "but otherwise"' in the following sentence? Does it mean "and" "besides"? So in this context, it means "healthy and obese"?🙏🙏

"Researchers assigned 57 obese but otherwise healthy people to one of these two groups or a control group,  in which people were simply weighted at the end of each month."

I also notice "obese" in here is a noun, how could it happen, or is it an omitted usage?🙏🙏

Answer

They were obese (overweight), but other than that they were healthy. Their only health issue was obesity. "Obese" is an adjective. "Obesity" is a noun.

Answer

"Otherwise" here means "in (all) other ways (excluding obesity)".

If you had wanted to say that the people were both healthy AND obese, you would have written "57 healthy obese people"

Answer

Obese is not a noun here. It is an adjective describing “people”. If you delete “but otherwise healthy” (which maybe should be in commas or parentheses) it is clear.