By IANS
London : Children who are overweight may face heart problems later in their life, a Danish study has said.
According to the findings reported in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, a child does not have to be hugely obese to be at increased risk of getting heart problems in the later stage of his life.
Even for a normal-weight boy, there is a one-in-nine risk of heart disease by the age of 60, the study said.
For the heavier child, this risk becomes at least one in six, according to the study that compared a 13-year-old boy weighing 96 pounds with another same aged and same height boy, who weighed 121 pounds.
The study is also based on a very big database complied by researcher Jennifer L. Baker and her colleagues at Copenhagen’s Centre for Health and Society.
They have compiled data of 10,235 men and 4,318 women born in Denmark’s capital Copenhagen from 1930 through 1976. They also compared records of every schoolchild in the city and matched them with national health records.
After the age of seven, overweight children have an increased risk of adult heart disease. The higher a child’s body mass index (BMI), which relates weight to height, the higher is the risk for the child of getting heart disease in his adulthood, the researchers said.
“What we found was at the age of seven, for both boys and girls, the risk was moderate. By age 13 the risk increased dramatically,” Baker was quoted as saying in online edition of health magazine WebMD.
Because risks are moderate at age seven and increase by age 13, the study suggests that helping these children in attaining and maintaining appropriate weight even during this short time can really improve their future outlook, Baker added.
Latest findings are a warning that parents must take childhood weight problems seriously, paediatric cardiologist Tom Kimball of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said.
Experts suggest there should be a sensible strategy to regulate junk-food advertising, fund healthy lunches and physical activities at school.