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Fat Kids Face Heart Risks Later

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The Washington Post

Published: December 6, 2007

WASHINGTON - Being overweight as a child significantly increases the risk of heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, according to a large new study that provides the most powerful evidence yet that the obesity epidemic is spawning a generation prone to serious adult health problems.

The study of more than 276,000 Danish children found that those overweight when they were 7 to 13 years old were much more likely to develop heart disease between the ages of 25 and 71 - even those who were just a little chubby as children, and possibly regardless of whether they lost the weight when they grew up.

"This is incredibly important," said Jennifer Baker of the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, who led the research published in The New England Journal of Medicine. "This is the first study to convincingly show that excess childhood weight is associated with heart disease in adulthood, or with any significant health problem in adulthood."

The study was published with an analysis of U.S. health statistics that projects teenage obesity will increase the nation's heart disease rate by at least 16 percent by the year 2035, causing more than 100,000 additional cases.

"This offers a frightening glimpse of what we have in store," said David Ludwig of Harvard Medical School, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

"The epidemic of childhood obesity is not a cosmetic problem. It can have profound long-term consequences for adult illness and death," Ludwig wrote.

The proportion of U.S. children who are overweight has tripled since 1976 and now totals more than 9 million. "Although studies have hinted there may be an association, none has been able to confirm it," Baker said.

Baker and her colleagues analyzed information on the height and weight of 276,835 Danish schoolchildren between 1955 and 1960.

They also scoured hospital records between 1977 and 2001 to determine which of them went on to be hospitalized for heart problems as adults.

The risk increased with any amount of excess weight in childhood, researchers found.

For example, a 4-foot-1-inch boy who weighed about 61 pounds at age 7 faced a 12 percent increased risk of developing heart disease between the ages of 25 and 71, compared with similar boy who was in the normal range of about 52 pounds.

But the greatest increased risk was for the heaviest older children, researchers found.

For example, a 5-foot-1-inch tall boy who weighed 121 pounds at age 13 had a 34 percent greater risk compared with a boy of the same height and age who had a normal weight of 96 1/2 pounds. The risk was 51 percent higher if the boy weighed 132 1/2 pounds.

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