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Increased cardiometabolic risk factors observed in children with severe obesity
Adolescents with severe obesity were significantly more likely to have elevated total cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose levels and blood pressure than teens with moderate obesity or normal weight, according to research in Childhood Obesity.
“Our results suggested that children and adolescents classified as severely obese had higher odds of having each of the six cardiometabolic risk factors (ORs ranged from 1.6 to 7.3) than children and adolescents classified as normal weight,” Linlin Li, PhD, MPH, of the school of medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues wrote. “Compared with those with moderately obese weight status, severely obese youth showed at least twofold higher odds for three of the six risk factors analyzed in this study.”
Li and colleagues analyzed data from 20,905 children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2012 (59% white; 50.5% boys; mean BMI, 21.4 kg/m²). Researchers classified severe obesity as a BMI at least 120% of the 95th percentile of BMI for age or at least 35 kg/m², whichever was lower for age and sex, and analyzed blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting glucose. Researchers used weighted multiple logistic regression to assess whether severe obesity significantly changed the odds of having cardiometabolic risk factors.
After adjusting for multiple factors including age, race, sex and survey period, researchers found adolescents with severe obesity had 5.3 times higher odds of developing high blood pressure when compared with their normal weight peers (95% CI, 3.78-7.33), as well as 2.3 times higher odds of having high triglycerides (95% CI, 1.81-2.96), 7.3 times higher odds of low HDL cholesterol (95% CI, 6.06-8.81), 4.5 times higher odds of high triglycerides (95% CI, 3.36-5.9), 2.3 times higher odds of high LDL cholesterol (95% CI, 1.48-3.47) and 2.7 times higher odds of high fasting glucose (95% CI, 1.81-3.99).
Significant differences were also found between severely obese status and moderately obese status in the odds of having high blood pressure (OR = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.7–2.2) and low HDL cholesterol (OR = 1.9; 95% CI, 1.6–2.3).
“These findings dramatize the heightened cardiovascular disease risks associated with severe obesity, even among teenagers,” Tom Baranowski, PhD, editor-in-chief of Childhood Obesity and professor of pediatrics-nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, said in a press release. “While causality cannot be inferred from these analyses, they do indicate that effective treatment programs are urgently needed for severely obese teens, and more effective prevention programs are needed at much earlier ages.” – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.