WASHINGTON — Being overweight as a child significantly increases the risk for heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, according to a large new study that provides the most powerful evidence yet that the obesity epidemic is spawning a generation prone to serious health problems later in life.
The study of more than 276,000 Danish children found those who were overweight when they were 7 to 13 years old were much more likely to develop heart disease between the ages of 25 and 71 — even those who were just a little chubby as kids, and possibly regardless of whether they lost the weight when they grew up.
“This is incredibly important,” said Jennifer Baker of the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, who led the research being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. “This is the first study to convincingly show that excess childhood weight is associated with heart disease in adulthood, or with any significant health problem in adulthood.”
The study was published with an analysis of U.S. health statistics that projects teenage obesity will increase the nation’s heart disease rate by at least 16 percent by the year 2035, causing more than 100,000 additional cases.
“This offers a frightening glimpse of what we have in store,” said David Ludwig of Harvard Medical School, who wrote an editorial accompanying the studies. “The epidemic of childhood obesity is not a cosmetic problem. It can have profound long-term consequences for adult illness and death.”
The proportion of U.S. children who are overweight has tripled since 1976 and now totals more than 9 million. The sharp rise has already caused a jump in children developing Type 2 diabetes, which used to be known as adult-onset diabetes because it occurred almost exclusively among adults. Children are also increasingly being diagnosed with high blood pressure and cholesterol, which raised fears they will be more likely to develop heart disease — the nation’s leading cause of death. But previous studies produced mixed results.
“Although studies have hinted there may be an association, none has been able to confirm it,” Baker said. “They didn’t have the power to show the association.”
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