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Last Updated: Jun 30, 2008 - 11:14:37 AM |
WEDNESDAY DEC 6, 2007 (Foodconsumer.org) -- Children who are overweight today will be at higher risk of heart disease and premature death after they enter young adulthood, according to a new study published in the Dec. 6, 2007 issue of the
New England Journal of Medicine.
The study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and Columbia University Medical Center was meant to estimate the potential impact of an increasingly overweight adolescent population on future adult health nationwide in the United States.
Based on data for the year 2000, the study found up to 37 percent of males and 44 percent of females will be obese when these teenagers turn 35 years old in 2020.
Because of the complications related to obesity and overweight, these young adults are expected to have more heart attacks, more chronic chest pain and more deaths before they reach age 50, according to a press release by UCSF.
According to the study, more than 100,000 extra cases of heart disease are expected by 2035, which is a16 percent increase compared to today's data. Also the increase in deaths of obesity-related coronary heart disease will be 19 percent.
"Our study suggests that more of these young adults will have heart disease when they are 35-50 years old, resulting in more hospitalizations, medical procedures, need for chronic medications, missed work days and shortened life expectancy," said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, lead author on the study and assistant professor in medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF.
"This study highlights the importance of preventing obesity before it starts in children. The current high rate of overweight is not just a problem for adolescents and their parents, it's something that will affect all of us well into the future," she added.
Today, nine million adolescents in the U.S. are overweight and the childhood obesity rates have tripled since 1970, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 80 percent of overweight teenagers will become obese when they reach adulthood, previous studies found.
"We must recall that we all tend to gain weight as we age, so overweight in adolescents means even higher weights later on,' said Lee Goldman, MD, MPH, the senior author and an original developer of the Coronary Heart Disease Policy Model used in the study. Goldman is executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center and dean of the medical school there.
"Although the general findings of our analysis are not surprising, we were struck by the sheer magnitude of the impact of adolescent obesity and, as a result, how important it is as a public health priority,' he added.
The researchers also found treatments of complications of being obese and overweight such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels at a young age will lead to a positive impact, but a high rate of heart disease will not be avoidable because of obesity-related diabetes.
"One of the major health risks for an obese person is becoming diabetic because diabetes increases the risk of heart disease and many other health complications. Unfortunately, it is currently very difficult to lower the likelihood of getting diabetes once a person is obese," said Bibbins-Domingo.
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