Childhood Obesity Alone May Increase Risk of Later Cardiovascular Disease

By as early as 7 years of age, being obese may raise a child’s risk of future heart disease and stroke, even in the absence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, according to a new study accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

“This new study demonstrates that the unhealthy consequences of excess body fat start very early,” says Nelly Mauras, MD, of Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and senior study author. “Our study shows that obesity alone is linked to certain abnormalities in the blood that can predispose individuals to developing cardiovascular disease early in adulthood.

These findings suggest that we need more aggressive interventions for weight control in obese children, even those who do not have the comorbidities of the metabolic syndrome.”

Mauras and her colleagues wanted to know if obesity could raise cardiovascular disease risk prior to the onset of the metabolic syndrome. Researchers therefore screened more than 300 individuals aged 7 to 18 years and included only those without features of metabolic syndrome. They included 202 participants in the study: 115 obese children and 87 lean children as controls. One half of the children were prepubertal and the other one half were in late puberty. Obese children had a body mass index above the 95th percentile for their sex, age, and height.

All study participants underwent blood testing for known markers for predicting the development of cardiovascular disease. These included elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation, and abnormally high fibrinogen, a clotting factor, among others. Obese children had a 10 fold higher CRP and significantly higher fibrinogen concentrations, compared with age- and sex-matched lean children, the authors reported. These abnormalities occurred in obese children as young as age 7, long before the onset of puberty.

The results were striking Mauras states, as the children were entirely healthy otherwise. Although it is not yet known whether early therapeutic interventions can reverse high CRP and fibrinogen, she said it would be prudent for health care providers to advise more aggressive interventions to limit calories and increase activity in “healthy” overweight children, even before the onset of puberty.

“Doctors often do not treat obesity in children now unless they have other features of the metabolic syndrome,” Mauras says. “This practice should be reconsidered. Further studies are needed to offer more insight into the effects of therapeutic interventions in these children.

Source: Endocrine Society