Fat children have up to six times more high blood pressure risk: Figures lead to doctors calling for taskforce to tackle child obesity
- Body representing GPs warns an entire generation will be ‘destroyed’ by junk food and sugary drinks
- Young obese girls have the biggest problem of getting heart disease
- One in three children is obese by time they leave primary school in the UK
Children who are obese are up to six times more at risk of high blood pressure – an adult condition commonly linked to heart disease, warn specialists.
Young obese girls have the biggest problem, with a 5.9-fold chance of developing it compared with those of healthy weight, while the risk is four times greater for obese boys.
The study from Germany also shows that children and teenagers who are overweight are more likely to have high blood pressure readings.
The study from Germany also shows that children and teenagers who are
overweight are more likely to have high blood pressure readings (File photos)
Experts say the findings are ‘alarming’, given that one in three children is overweight and obese by the time they leave primary school in the UK.
They come as doctors called for the creation of an emergency taskforce to tackle ‘the rising epidemic’ of childhood obesity, similar to the Government’s Cobra panel which deals with terrorism and national disasters.
The professional body representing GPs has warned that an entire generation will be ‘destroyed’ by a diet of junk food and sugary drinks unless urgent action is taken.
In an open letter to the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and 11 linked organisations said a national Child Obesity Action Group (COAG) should be formed as ‘a matter of urgency’.
Doctors, nurses, midwives, dieticians, dentists and schools would collaborate to try to prevent obesity and improve treatment services to stop children developing health problems in later life.
Dr Richard Roope, RCGP clinical lead for cancer, said: ‘For the first time, we have a generation of patients who may predecease their parents. Only three per cent of the public associate weight with cancer, yet, after smoking, obesity is the biggest reversible factor in cancers.’
Stark evidence of the link between body fat and ill-health, even in young children, was released yesterday (sun) by researchers running a Family Heart Study in Nuremberg, Germany.
It included 22,051 children and adolescents aged three to 18 years from ‘health-conscious’ families whose blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and body fat percentage was measured.
They found that compared with normal weight children and adolescents, the risk of prehypertension (which precedes a condition needing medical treatment) was significantly higher in youngsters with high BMI scores.
The prevalence of high blood pressure increased in boys and girls as body weight went up, based on averages among the groups at the age of seven years and again at 14 years.
Hypertension in normal weight boys was 5.7 per cent, rising to 10.4 per cent for the overweight and 18.6 per cent in obese boys.
The researchers found the prevalence of hypertension was highest in obese girls at 24.4 per cent, and 9 per cent in the overweight compared with five per cent in those of normal weight.
Prof Schwandt said ‘The risk of having hypertension is 5.9 time higher for an obese girls and 4.3 times higher for an obese boy than for normal-weight young people.’
He released the data yesterday (sun) at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) meeting in Barcelona.
Hypertension was a blood pressure reading over the 95th percentile of the blood pressure curve for children and adolescents. The diagnosis was based on several measurements on separate days and on repeated estimations with the child sitting quietly for five minutes.
Professor Empar Lurbe, professor of paediatrics at the University of Valencia, Spain, told the meeting: ‘Blood pressure in children increases with age and body size.
Our study clearly shows that the fatter young people are, the greater their risk of prehypertension and hypertension. Any weight loss they can achieve will help reduce their risk
‘This makes it impossible to use a single blood pressure level to define hypertension, as we do in adults.’
Professor Schwandt said ‘Our study clearly shows that the fatter young people are, the greater their risk of prehypertension and hypertension. Any weight loss they can achieve will help reduce their risk.
‘This is of great importance because of the ongoing rise in the prevalence of hypertension and overweight/obesity in young people and the tracking of childhood overweight into adulthood.’
Tam Fry, from the UK’s National Obesity Forum, said ‘It’s alarming. This demonstrates that obesity is no longer a timebomb; it is a crisis which is escalating every day.
‘We need to stop children getting fat in the first place, because fat children become fat adults and as this study shows, even before then they are suffering from major health risks.
‘When it comes to high blood pressure, which vastly increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes, it is likely that the foods being eaten by obese children are not helping; crisps piled high in salt, and so forth.
‘This has to be wake-up call. We are looking at a situation in which children are buried before their parents, the obesity crisis in Britain is horrifying.’
Professor Pedro Marques-Vidal, head of the ESC’s preventive health group, said doctors were ‘definitely not’ advocating that blood pressure drugs be given to children.
He said there was evidence that losing weight could reverse high blood pressure and it was vital that parents and schools worked together to combat the problem.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
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