Risk factors for childhood obesity identified

Three-year-old children who spend more than eight hours watching television per week face an increased risk of becoming obese, a new study has claimed.

This is just one of eight ‘risk factors’ identified by the study, published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The study, by a team at the University of Glasgow and Bristol, involved 8,234 children, aged 7 and over, as well as a further sample of 909 children, taking part in a large UK study of parents and children. Researchers took height and weight measurements of the participants and also calculated their body mass index (BMI).

Overall, four risk factors were identified for children age seven – increasing birth weight; obesity in one of both parents; more than eight hours spent watching television at the age of 3; and getting less than 10.5 hours of sleep per night at the age of 3.

The team also identified another four factors that were described as “significant” for children in the additional sample – size in early life; rapid weight gain in the first year; rapid ‘catch-up’ growth between birth and two years; and early development of body fatness before the age of 5 or 6.

However, the authors of the study admitted that the precise way in which these factors might increase the risk of obesity was “complex”.

For example, parental obesity could increase the risk via genetics or by shared family characteristics, such as a shared preference for certain types of food. The amount of sleep a child had could affect growth hormone secretion, reduce the child’s exposure to food intake in the evening or could be affected by the amount of physical activity taken during the day. Finally, watching television could confer risk through a reduction in energy expenditure or an increase in food intake.

The authors of the study concluded: “Our study provides evidence of the role of the early life environment in the later risk of obesity. Most interventions to prevent obesity have tried to change lifestyles of children and adolescents and have been unsuccessful. Future interventions might focus on environmental changes targeted at relatively short periods in early life, attempting to modify factors during pregnancy, in infancy, or in early childhood, which are independently related to later risk of obesity.”

(KMcA/SP)