Regional adiposity and markers of inflammation in pre-school age children

In adults, upper body fat partially increases metabolic disease risk through increasing systemic inflammation. Our objective was to determine if this relationship exists in preschool-aged children. A subset of children (n = 71, 35 males), 3.7 ± 1.0 y, were studied from n = 515 children recruited from randomly selected daycares in Montréal, QC. According to WHO charts for 2–5 y, 49 children were healthy weight (HW) and 21 were overweight (OW). Adiposity was determined through dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Blood concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) were determined via enzyme-linked immunosorbent and multiplex assays, respectively. OW children had higher (p = 0.03) android:gynoid ratio 0.50 ± 0.09 compared to HW children 0.56 ± 0.12, indicating excess fat was predominantly stored in the abdominal depot. CRP was higher (p = 0.01) in OW children 1.45 ± 2.02 mg/L compared to HW 0.74 ± 1.38 mg/L. Percent fat was correlated with CRP (r = 0.32; p < 0.01) and TNFα (r = 0.25; p = 0.04) concentrations. CRP also correlated with android adiposity (r = 0.24; p = 0.04) and TNFα correlated with gynoid adiposity (r = 0.24; p = 0.04). We observed that greater adiposity is associated with higher systemic inflammation in pre-school aged children. Future longitudinal studies are needed to understand the long term consequences of excess total and regional body fat in young children.