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Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania

Background and Objectives: Childhood obesity has been increasing at a worrisome pace and emerging as a non-infectious pandemic in the pediatric population in recent years. Raising awareness on this problem is of utmost importance, in order to take action to control body weight from an early age. Mat...

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Autores principales: Pascu, Bogdan Mihai, Miron, Victor Daniel, Matei, Emanuela Rachel, Craiu, Mihai
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9964917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36837520
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59020319
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author Pascu, Bogdan Mihai
Miron, Victor Daniel
Matei, Emanuela Rachel
Craiu, Mihai
author_facet Pascu, Bogdan Mihai
Miron, Victor Daniel
Matei, Emanuela Rachel
Craiu, Mihai
author_sort Pascu, Bogdan Mihai
collection PubMed
description Background and Objectives: Childhood obesity has been increasing at a worrisome pace and emerging as a non-infectious pandemic in the pediatric population in recent years. Raising awareness on this problem is of utmost importance, in order to take action to control body weight from an early age. Materials and Methods: We performed a retrospective study among overweight or obese children evaluated on an outpatient basis in the Department of Pediatric Endocrinology of a tertiary care hospital in Bucharest Romania in 2021 in order to identify laboratory changes occurring according to age and sex. Results: A total of 268 children were included in the analysis, with a median age of 10.9 years (IQR: 8.3, 13.3 years); 61.8% were obese and 38.2% overweight. We identified a subclinical pro-inflammatory status characterized by increased neutrophil count (12.7%) and increased C-reactive protein (16.4%). Biochemically, we identified the highest increases for uric acid (35.4%). More than half of the children included in the study had dyslipidemia-specific changes: high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) (50.0%), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) (58.9%) and increased triglyceride levels (12.7%), especially children with a body mass-index (BMI) percentile above 95%. Increased thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was identified in 20.3% and low thyroxine (T4) level in 13.4%, especially in females. Conclusions: Early measures to control excess body weight are needed since preventing obesity is easier than treating it. However, this is often difficult to do in our country because parents frequently do not recognize the problem until it is advanced. Furthermore, doctors are not always adequately prepared and sometimes they do not have the support of the health systems to provide children in need with the adequate care. Educational strategies and awareness of issue should be revisited in current post-pandemic context that facilitates increase of obesity prevalence in children. Increase of efficient communication could be achieved by pointing to these objective findings.
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spelling pubmed-99649172023-02-26 Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania Pascu, Bogdan Mihai Miron, Victor Daniel Matei, Emanuela Rachel Craiu, Mihai Medicina (Kaunas) Article Background and Objectives: Childhood obesity has been increasing at a worrisome pace and emerging as a non-infectious pandemic in the pediatric population in recent years. Raising awareness on this problem is of utmost importance, in order to take action to control body weight from an early age. Materials and Methods: We performed a retrospective study among overweight or obese children evaluated on an outpatient basis in the Department of Pediatric Endocrinology of a tertiary care hospital in Bucharest Romania in 2021 in order to identify laboratory changes occurring according to age and sex. Results: A total of 268 children were included in the analysis, with a median age of 10.9 years (IQR: 8.3, 13.3 years); 61.8% were obese and 38.2% overweight. We identified a subclinical pro-inflammatory status characterized by increased neutrophil count (12.7%) and increased C-reactive protein (16.4%). Biochemically, we identified the highest increases for uric acid (35.4%). More than half of the children included in the study had dyslipidemia-specific changes: high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) (50.0%), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) (58.9%) and increased triglyceride levels (12.7%), especially children with a body mass-index (BMI) percentile above 95%. Increased thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was identified in 20.3% and low thyroxine (T4) level in 13.4%, especially in females. Conclusions: Early measures to control excess body weight are needed since preventing obesity is easier than treating it. However, this is often difficult to do in our country because parents frequently do not recognize the problem until it is advanced. Furthermore, doctors are not always adequately prepared and sometimes they do not have the support of the health systems to provide children in need with the adequate care. Educational strategies and awareness of issue should be revisited in current post-pandemic context that facilitates increase of obesity prevalence in children. Increase of efficient communication could be achieved by pointing to these objective findings. MDPI 2023-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9964917/ /pubmed/36837520 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59020319 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Pascu, Bogdan Mihai
Miron, Victor Daniel
Matei, Emanuela Rachel
Craiu, Mihai
Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title_full Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title_fullStr Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title_full_unstemmed Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title_short Laboratory Findings in Children with Excess Body Weight in Romania
title_sort laboratory findings in children with excess body weight in romania
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9964917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36837520
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59020319
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