Tubby toddlers face adult risks

Babies who gain weight too fast in the first years of life can become obese and develop high blood pressure later in life, putting them at risk of early heart disease, researchers say.

A study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation is one of three issued this month that said it was important to make sure infants and young children did not put on weight too quickly.

"Paediatricians often encourage catch-up growth for babies with low birth weight, but we didn't know if this might lead to higher blood pressure in these people when they are adults," Dr Catherine Law of the University of Southampton in Britain, who led one of the studies, said.

Teams at Southampton found in a number of studies that babies weighing less than 2.5kg grew up to have a range of heart problems.

Researchers wondered whether the practice of fattening up the babies after birth, which doctors often encouraged mothers to do, might lead to high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart disease in those children.

To find out, they studied 346 British men and women, averaging 22 years old, who had had their weight and height measured regularly from birth to age 10.

"We found that lower birth weight and greater weight gain between one and five years of age were associated with higher systolic blood pressure in young adult life," Dr Law's team wrote.



"Children who have higher body mass are more likely to become obese as adults, a matter of public health concern."

Twenty per cent of the United States population is obese, creating greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain kinds of cancer.

And there could be a danger, the researchers said, in developing countries where many low weight babies were born.

Those children often gained weight quickly on Western-style diets provided by food aid programmes.

The research team did not find that babies less than a year old who gained weight quickly were prone to high blood pressure.

But a study published in the journal Paediatrics found that infants who gained the most weight during the first four months of life were more likely to be obese as children.

"Early infancy seems to be a critical period for the establishment of obesity. Babies double their birth weight during the first four to six months, so this may be a period for the establishment of weight regulation," said Dr Nicolas Stettler of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who led the study.

His team found that babies who gained 100 grams above the normal weight gain each month had a 25 per cent increased risk of being overweight by the age of seven.

Dr Stettler said an easy way to prevent putting on too much weight too fast would be to follow American Academy of Paediatrics guidelines. These recommended giving a baby nothing but breast milk up to the age of six months, adding solid food slowly after that and continuing breast milk for the first year.

Parents were also urged to take their children to the paediatrician regularly to have their weight and height measured.

In the US, the number of overweight children aged six to 11 has tripled over the past 30 years.

A third study, also published in the journal Circulation, suggested that extra weight in children might be an indicator of high blood pressure.

- REUTERS

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