More weight gain for teen boys with obesity than girls during COVID-19
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Teenage boys with obesity gained more than 8 pounds on average vs. about 2.6 pounds for girls, during Italy’s first COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, primarily due to spending more time video gaming, according to study data.
“Male adolescents were more harmed than female adolescents from lockdown restrictions,” Stefano Zucchini, MD, PhD, an aggregate professor at the University Hospital Sant’Orsola-Malpighi of Bologna, Italy, told Healio. “The first highlight is that the increase in hours spent in sedentary behavior was more typical of male obese adolescents: Males, in fact, declared significantly more daily hours spent playing video games than female adolescents. Therefore, it was not the increase in caloric intake in determining the weight increase in our special category of obese adolescents, but rather the lower caloric expenditure.”
Zucchini and colleagues analyzed data from adolescents aged 10 to 18 years with primary obesity and normal glucose, HbA1c and thyroid-stimulating hormone who had a visit to the University Hospital Sant’Orsola-Malpighi of Bologna outpatient clinic within 2 months before Italy’s first COVID-19 lockdown on March 8, 2020, as well as after the lockdown ended from May 18 to June 30, 2020. Data on body weight, height, blood pressure and waist circumference were collected. Participants completed a short-form questionnaire at their post-lockdown visit on physical activity and sedentary behavior levels during the lockdown. Participants also answered questions about changes in diet, consumption of junk food per week, and frequency of vegetable and fruit intake daily during the pandemic. The study’s findings were published in Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases.
There were 51 adolescents who participated in the study (60.8% boys; mean age, 14.7 years). The study cohort had a mean body weight increase of 2.8 kg (P < .001) and a mean BMI increase of 0.52 kg/m2 (P = .024) after the lockdown compared with baseline. The study cohort performed less physical activity and engaged in 2.9 more hours of sedentary behavior per day during the lockdown compared with baseline (P < .001).
Boys had greater weight gain during the COVID-19 lockdown compared with girls (3.8 kg vs. 1.2 kg; P = .02). Researchers partially attributed this gain to boys spending more than twice the amount of time in sedentary behavior during the lockdown compared with girls (3.8 hours per day vs. 1.5 hours; P = .003). There were no significant changes in moderate or intense physical activity or the intake of junk food or fruits and vegetables.
“The reason why females gained less weight than males can be mainly found in the fact that females increased the hours of sedentary behavior less than males,” the researchers wrote. “Boys, in fact, dedicated many of these hours to online video games.”
Zucchini said researchers should continue to monitor the changing behaviors of adolescents with obesity as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and new lockdowns are instituted.
“It would be interesting to know the effect of the present prolonged restriction on weight, physical activity and sedentary behavior in this population of fragile patients, also by enlarging the research on obese patients with type 2 diabetes,” Zucchini said.
For more information:
Stefano Zucchini, MD, PhD, can be reached at stefano.zucchini@aosp.bo.it.
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