Pediatric metabolic syndrome, which contains risk factors such as hypertension, insulin resistance and other metabolic abnormalities, increases as obesity worsens. It affects nearly half of severely obese children and adolescents.
Yale University researchers studied the relationship between the degree of obesity and metabolic syndrome in 439 obese, 31 overweight and 20 lean children and adolescents between ages 4 and 20.
They gave participants a glucose-tolerant test and measured for blood pressure and other factors related to the target diseases.
“The main issue is that every amount of weight gain increases risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in these young people,” said Dr. Ram Weiss, author of the study and clinical fellow in pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine.