Information presented at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific sessions, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has revealed children as young as eight years old are displaying signs of cardiac disease if they are above a certain weight. Signs of heart disease correlate with a Body Mass Index indicative of obesity.
Science News reports the data relates to a small study conducted in Florida, involving just 20 children who were obese and compared them with 20 children of normal weight. The children were aged between eight and 18 years.
While the results of this inquiry could be difficult to extrapolate, the findings match some earlier research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 2012 (“Prevalence of Obesity and Trends in Body Mass Index Among US Children and Adolescents, 1999-2010.”) Here it was found, among the children surveyed:
14 percent had high blood pressure or pre-hypertension.
22 percent had borderline-high.
22 percent had so-called bad cholesterol.
6 percent had low concentrations of the good cholesterol.
15 percent had diabetes or prediabetes.
This was seen as a shift upwards from studies conducted near the start of the century.
With the new study, Science News reports, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to examine cardiac muscle in children. The scans showed patterns of heart enlargement due to fat deposits. The scans focused on the heart’s main blood pumping area — the left ventricle. In obese children the heart was 12 percent thicker, and thickness is associated with heart disease.
The inference from the study is that youth does not protect children from heart disease and children who are obese, or even overweight, could be heading for lifelong cardiac problems.
