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Overweight, obesity common, increasing among Australian indigenous children
Nearly one-third of Australian indigenous children with a normal baseline BMI developed overweight or obesity within 3 years, with greater gains observed in younger children, girls and Torres Strait Islander vs. Aboriginal children, according to findings published in Obesity.
“We found that most children in the Footprints in Time study had a healthy BMI; however, there was a rapid onset of overweight and obesity across the early childhood years,” Katherine Ann Thurber, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, told Endocrine Today. “We found that nearly one-third of children who had a healthy weight at baseline (when they were aged 3 to 6 years) had become overweight or obese 3 years later (when they were aged 6 to 9 years). We need to promote healthy weight starting from the first years; that means working with families and communities to give children the best start in life.”
Thurber and colleagues analyzed data from 1,155 indigenous children from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, a national study organized by the Australian government’s Department of Social Services. Children aged 6 months to 2 years and 3.5 to 5 years were recruited from 11 diverse sites in 2008; data for this study are from waves 3 to 6, collected between 2010 and 2013. Researchers measured height and weight of children, and children and their caregivers completed in-person interviews, providing information on potential confounding factors, such as diet (including consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages) and screen time. Researchers examined BMI trajectories in a sample restricted to children with a normal baseline BMI (n = 907) to rule out reverse causation.
Among younger children (mean age at baseline, 3 years), 9% had overweight and 3.1% had obesity. Among older children (mean age at baseline, 6 years), 16% had overweight and 9.4% had obesity.
In the BMI trajectory analysis of children with normal baseline BMI, 5.4% of younger children developed overweight or obesity within 1 year (wave 4), increasing to 13.8% in wave 5 and 34.3% by wave 6. Among children in the older group, 10.6% of children developed overweight or obesity at wave 4, increasing to 16.4% in wave 5 and 28.2% by wave 6.
Researchers found that BMI increased more rapidly for older vs. younger children (mean, 0.67 kg/m² vs. 0.08 kg/m2), for girls vs. boys (difference, 0.15 kg/m2 per year; 95% CI, 0.07-0.23), and Torres Strait Islander vs. Aboriginal children (difference, 0.29 kg/m2 per year; 95% CI, 0.11-0.46).
Compared with children living in advantaged areas, mean BMI was lower for children living in more disadvantaged areas, but researchers noted the differences were significant in only some waves. Predicted BMI was also lower across waves for children with lower sugar-sweetened beverage and high-fat food consumption, but the differences did not reach significance.
“More than 10% of children already had overweight/obesity by age 3 years, and we observed a rapid onset of overweight/obesity between age 3 to 6 and 6 to 9 years,” the researchers wrote. “This indicates the need for interventions to reduce the prevalence of overweight/obesity in the first 3 years of life and to slow the rapid onset of overweight and obesity from age 3 to 9 years. Efforts to promote healthy BMI trajectories among female children are of particular priority.” – by Regina Schaffer
For more information:
Katherine Ann Thurber can be reached at the Research School of Population Health, Australian National University College of Medicine, Biology & Environment, 62 Mills Road, Acton ACT 2601; email: katherine.thurber@anu.edu.au.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.