A new study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood suggested that two thirds of severely obese children have at least one cardiovascular risk factor.
The findings were based on data from the Dutch Paediatric Surveillance Unit on children aged 2-18 between 2005 an d 2007. Paediatricians were asked to report information on children's cardiovascular risk factors - high blood pressure, fasting blood glucose levels and blood fats.
The study found that 307 out of 363 children were correctly classified severely obese, 52% were boys and they tended to be more severely obese at younger age but girls were obese at older age. Nearly 1 in 3 severely obese children came from single parent family. 67% had at least 1 cardiovascular risk factor, 56% had hypertension and 54% had high levels of bad cholesterol, 14% had high fasting blood glucose, and 1% already had type 2 diabetes. The authors said "high prevalence of hypertension and abnormal lipids may lead to cardiovascular disease in young adulthood.”
Critics noted some limitatons to the study, eg, a lack of internationally agreed criteria for diagnosing severe obesity in children, the difficulty of generalising the study results to other populations due to the small size of the study, the ethnicities of the children might also have an effect on the results.
Source: Van Emmerik NMA, Renders CM, van de Veer M, et al. High cardiovascular risk in severely obese young children and adolescents. Archives of Disease in Childhood. Published online July 23, 2012
(full text via Athens)
No comments:
Post a Comment