Effective ways to control heart disease in obese children in adulthood

Childhood is a window of opportunity to tackle obesity before the damage it causes is irreversible, according to a scientific statement by experts on heart disease and childhood obesity published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)

Childhood obesity and the associated problems of high blood pressure, blood lipids and blood glucose track into adulthood. For example, obese children are five times more likely to become obese adults than their healthy weight peers. The document emphasise the need to tackle obesity and the accompanying risk factors together, as having more than one problem compounds the likelihood of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adulthood. Compared to children with a low body mass index (BMI), those with a high BMI are 40% more likely to suffer from CVD in midlife. Children with a combination of risk factors including smoking and high BMI, blood pressure and blood lipids have a two- to nine-fold greater risk of heart attack and stroke in midlife.