Cardiometabolic Factors in Pediatric Patients with Chronic Diseases

Abstract

The prevalence of chronic diseases (CDs) in the pediatric population has increased due to technological advances that decrease mortality and increase survival. To compare the frequency of cardiometabolic factors (CFs) among pediatric patients with CDs with those among children with obesity and overweight without CDs. This study was a cross-sectional study. Pediatric patients from 6-17 years of age were included. A total of 333 patients with CD were studied, and of these patients, 77 had difficult-to-control epilepsy, 183 had chronic kidney disease (CKD), and 73 underwent kidney transplants; in addition, a comparison group was included, consisting of 286 overweight and obese children without any other pathologies. We performed anthropometry, blood pressure, glucose, insulin, and lipid profiling on all of the patients. Statistical analysis was conducted as follows: Chi2 tests were used to compare the CFs between the groups. We included 619 patients from 6-17 years old. Patients with CDs had a low frequency of obesity (12.4%) but a high frequency of the remaining CFs. Hypertriglyceridemia (65%), hypoalphalipoproteinemia (49%) and systemic arterial hypertension (46.5%) were the most common CFs, particularly among subjects with CKD and kidney transplantation. When comparing the frequencies of these CFs with those in the obesity/overweight group, hypertriglyceridemia (p <0.05) was more common in patients with CDs. In patients with CDs, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and hyperglycemia occur at frequencies that are the same as or higher than those in overweight/obese children, but when the CD patients are overweight/obese, it increases their frequency.