Study makes no bones about fat

2005-11-22 10:35

Dallas - Children who are overweight face more than future health problems. They appear to have broken bones and joint problems more often during childhood than kids of normal weight, research suggests.

"A lot of people think that if you're an overweight kid ... that later on in life you're going to run into having heart disease or Type 2 diabetes," said Dr Susan Yanovski, director of the obesity and eating disorders programme at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

"But kids and adults who are overweight are already having problems with their mobility, fractures, and joint pain."

A study led by her husband, obesity researcher Dr Jack Yanovski, found that children and teens who were overweight were far more likely to have had a fracture than their ideal-weight peers. They also had more bone and hip joint abnormalities, which can lead to permanent deformities.

Vicious cycle

The research involved 227 overweight children and adolescents and 128 who were not overweight. The children had an average age of 12. All were enrolled in various federal health studies between 1996 and 2004 and were considered overweight if they were in the 95th percentile of weight and height for their age and sex.

Their medical history revealed that 13% of overweight kids had had at least one broken bone at some point in their lives, compared with less than 4% of ideal-weight children.

Similar results were found for how many had muscle, bone or joint pain, especially knee pain, and restricted movement.

"The combination of musculoskeletal pain and poor mobility may possibly lead to less physical activity and perpetuate the vicious cycle," said Yanovski, head of the growth and obesity programme at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He presented the results at the Obesity Society meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Painful malformation

A common disease is slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE), caused by improper growth in the ball part of the ball-and-socket joint that forms the hip, said Dr Junichi Tamai, a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon at Children's Hospital Medical Centre in Cincinnati.

Children often say their knees hurt, but the real problem is the malformation that's starting to occur in the joint, he said. Being unable to exercise makes the situation worse.

"If a child is very active, chances are the bones are very strong," because weight-bearing exercise promotes bone density, Tamai said.

"Also, a very active child may be able to fall better," he said. If kids have too many pounds on their frame, "when they fall, there's just more weight behind it" and bones are more likely to snap.

Hormones are believed to play a role, too.

"What we generally see is that lean, muscular young men have the hardest bone, and that goes along with the testosterone", which can be lower in very overweight boys, Tamai said.

- AP