Human Services News

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

A new study investigating the health effects of being overweight during adolescence projects alarming increases in the rates of heart disease and premature death by the time today's teenagers reach young adulthood.

Findings of the study are reported in the Dec. 6, 2007 issue of the "New England Journal of Medicine."

A team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and Columbia University Medical Center used a computer-based statistical modeling system known as the Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) Policy Model to estimate the potential impact of an increasingly overweight U.S. adolescent population on future adult health nationwide.

Based on the numbers of overweight adolescents in 2000, the study found that up to 37 percent of males and 44 percent of females will be obese when these teenagers turn 35 years old in 2020.

As a consequence of this obesity, these young adults are expected to have more heart attacks, more chronic chest pain and more deaths before they reach age 50.

Our study suggests that more of these young adults will have heart disease when they are 35-50 years old, resulting in more hospitalizations, medical procedures, need for chronic medications, missed work days and shortened life expectancy," said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, lead author on the study and assistant professor in medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF.

Findings indicate that controlling these factors at a young age will help, but heart disease rates could still rise due to the persistent risk of diabetes associated with obesity.

The study was funded by the Swanson Family Fund at UCSF, Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

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