A Child’s Weight Gain Predicts Adult Metabolic Syndrome

Children who experience a faster increase in body mass index (BMI) than their peers are prone to developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome in adulthood, according to a new study.

As noted in the October Archives of Disease in Childhood, childhood obesity is an unsatisfactory marker for identifying at-risk children in developing countries where childhood obesity is rare.

Dr. H.P.S. Sachdev from Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research, New Delhi, India, and colleagues assessed the occurrence of metabolic syndrome and impaired glucose tolerance or Type 2 diabetes in 1,492 men and women whose BMI was recorded every 6 months throughout childhood.

Higher childhood BMI was associated with an increased prevalence of adult-onset metabolic syndrome, the authors report, and this association strengthened with increasing age of the childhood BMI measurement.

The prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance/diabetes was higher in individuals whose BMI was lower up to the age of 8 years, but the pattern was similar to that for metabolic syndrome from 11 years onward.

The prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance/diabetes and metabolic syndrome was higher in men and women whose BMI increased with time, especially at older ages, the researchers note.

Any increase in BMI standard deviation score between ages 5 and 14 in combination with a BMI standard deviation greater than zero at age 14 gave the optimal predictions of adult risk for diabetes or metabolic syndrome.

Being overweight/obese specifically identified children at risk of metabolic syndrome or impaired glucose tolerance/diabetes, the investigators say, but because few of the children who developed adult pathology were overweight/obese, the sensitivity and attributable fraction were quite low.

“We are currently restudying the cohort after an interval of 5 years, and will reassess the predictions,” the authors conclude.