A new study, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicates that the heaviest children are more than twice as likely to die before the age of 55, either due to illness or self-inflicted injury. The study utilized data collected from the Pima and Tohono O'odham Indians, two Native American tribes whose rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes began climbing decades before those of mainstream America.

The study included 4,857 non-diabetic American Indian children born between 1945 and 1984, beginning when the children were about 11 years old, on average. Researchers assessed the extent to which body mass index, glucose tolerance, blood pressure and total cholesterol levels were linked to premature death.

As of 2003, 559 participants had died (this included 166 individuals who died of causes other than accidents or homicides, such as cancer, diabetes, alcohol poisoning or drug overdose, alcoholic liver disease or cardiovascular disease). Researchers found that adults who had the highest Body Mass Index (BMI) ratings as children were 2.3 times more likely to die early, as compared with those who had the lowest BMI scores. In addition, individuals with the highest glucose levels were 73 percent more likely to die prematurely.

Helen C. Looker, senior author of the paper and assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, commented on the findings: "This suggests that obesity in children, even prepubescent children, may have very serious long-term health effects through midlife  that there is something serious being set in motion by obesity at early ages. We all expect to get beyond 55 these days."

(Source: www.nytimes.com)

Labels: health, childhood-obesity

Posted By: Aspen Education Group