Children under the lens (Photo: Flickr)
The World Health Organisation figures are clear: obesity worldwide has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008 it is estimated that adults over 20 years were overweight and a half billion, with 200 million people and 300 million women classified as obese. An exponentially growing phenomenon that unfortunately affects children. A study del'Università Montreal, Canada, has individato some predictors.
In 2010 there were in the world 43 million children under 5 years are overweight. Italy follows the trend, data surveillance project Okkio of Health , which in 2010 has tracked 42,000 children of primary school, say that 23% are overweight and 11% obese. In a sea of data concern, since obesity is a risk factor for many diseases from diabetes to cardiovacolari diseases, the good news is that you can prevent. To do so may be useful to identify early on people who have more chances of getting overweight.
Even in Quebec, there has been a surge of obesity in the last generation, so I'm active monitoring programs and longitudinal studies have been conducted to help develop policies for prevention. Just drawing from the Longitudinal Study on the development of childhood , which lasted from 1998 to 2006, Laura Pryor and colleagues from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine , University of Montreal have analyzed data on 1,957 children, of whom were recorded weight and height intervals of one year between 5 months and 8 years of age.
The database has allowed researchers to observe the evolution of body mass index or BMI, Body Mass Index from English, of children over time. This parameter, as is known, is obtained by dividing weight in kilograms by the square of height in meters and is used to determine whether a person is underweight, overweight or have the right weight for your height. Canadian scientists have discovered what? That children could be divided into three groups, each corresponding to a different trend of BMI: a BMI of children with low and stable (around 54%), children with moderate BMI (about 41%) and finally those with a high index and increasing (about 4.5%), BMI named high growth.
The interesting fact, say the authors of the study published in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, is that "the trajectories of all three groups were similar until the children were about two and a half years. But the three and a half years on, the BMI in the 'high growth' has begun to rise. " "When children have reached school age," says Pryor, "more than half of them were obese according to international criteria."
By analyzing all available data on children in the study, the researchers identified two factors that may explain quest'andamento so different between the group "high growth" and other groups: the weight of the mother at delivery and whether the mother smoked pregnant. Children of mothers who smoke or are overweight had a higher probability of belonging to the group with higher BMI. These two items were more important than other criteria, such as the baby's weight at birth, in order to predict the risk of obesity.
Obviously, the researchers point out, these risk factors represent only increased likelihood of suffering from overweight, not a direct cause of obesity, but it is still a very useful discovery. "Our research adds to growing evidence that the perinatal environment has an important influence on obesity future," said Laura Pryor. "This indicates the need for early intervention in families at risk to prevent the development of weight problems in childhood."
