Data collected by the Dutch Pediatric Surveillance Unit shows that two out of three obese children face cardiovascular risk factors.
Doctors in the Netherlands reported data based on new diagnoses of childhood obesity in children between the ages of 2-18. Remarkably, 62% of severely obese children under 12 already had at least one cardiovascular risk factor. These factors include high blood pressure (56%), high density of ‘bad’ cholesterol (54%), high blood sugar (14%), and type II diabetes(<1%). These risk factors are closely associated with heart disease and at such an early age should warn parents of potential heart problems in the future.
The most astonishing figure, however, is that out of the 500 newly diagnosed obese children, only one diagnosis was due to a medical condition rather than lifestyle.
Read the study in full here in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
