Obese children experience heart problems in adulthood

It is widely known that a growing number of children worldwide are suffering from obesity, and the problem is escalating dramatically. This growing epidemic of global childhood obesity results in an increase of premature heart attacks and strokes, revealed two new studies published in the Dec. 6 issue of New England Journal of Medicine.

Children and adolescents who are overweight are at significant risk of developing heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, the two studies concluded.

The first study was conducted in Denmark by Jennifer Baker and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen. They looked at a group of almost 277,000 Danish children, who all were born in the Danish city between 1930 and were student of a school in Copenhagen. The investigators examined those children in 1930 and followed through to adulthood (through 2001) to determine how excess weight affected the children.

The second study by Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo and colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco used a computer model to predict how childhood obesity would influence the people in adulthood. The experts projected the number of overweight adults based on the number of overweight adolescents in 2000.

In the Danish study, the larger of the two studies, the researchers found that of the total examined people, 10,235 men and 4,318 women suffered from heart disease or died from it later in life. Only these two groups’ childhood body-mass index (BMI) data were available and they had received a diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD) or died of CHD as adults.

The researchers found that the heavier the children were as youngsters, the greater their risk of developing heart disease as adults, including fatal heart attack. They found that overweight boys between the ages of 7 and 13, as well as overweight girls between the ages of 9 and 13, had an increased risk of both developing heart disease and dying from it as adults.

Our work "suggests that more children than ever before are facing increased risks of CHD in adulthood," said Danish study’s lead author Baker.

Using a computer model, the second study predicted that there would be more than a 100,000 extra cases of heart disease by 2035, which is an increase of 1%, and heart disease deaths due to the childhood obesity could rise by 19%, with the increase beginning at age 35. The study estimated that up to 37 percent of men and 44 percent of women will be obese when these people, now teenagers, turn 35 in 2020.

"To some extent, we're not surprised. We know it's not good to be overweight at any age but we were really struck by the magnitude of this increase," said lead author Bibbins-Domingo, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California.

"And it really suggests that we really have to work now to prevent children from becoming overweight because this is going to have an impact well into adulthood."

With obesity becoming an increasingly large problem in the United States, these two studies have dealt a major shock to the parents who are already worried about their kids’ extra pounds.

American Obesity Association (AOA) has described the obesity on its Website as a complex, multi-factorial chronic disease involving environmental (social and cultural), genetic, physiologic, metabolic, behavioral and psychological components.

Obesity is a gateway to heart disease, diabetes and a host of other diseases, and is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Today, obesity has become a burning issue in many of the countries, mostly the developed ones. It has reached almost epidemic levels in the United States where nearly 127 million adults are overweight, 60 million obese and 9 million severely obese.