Childhood obesity and early target organ damage

Abstract

Childhood obesity has been an important public health issue worldwide. We searched PubMed, CNKI, and Wanfang databases to perform a systematic review of how to identify early target organ (including heart, vessel, kidney and liver etc) damage in children, the effects of obesity on early target organ damage (including left ventricular hypertrophy, left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, increased carotid intima-media thickness, increased arterial stiffness, impaired glomerular filtration rate, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, etc), the possible biological mechanisms (including hemodynamic changes, abnormal metabolic indices, and effects of cytokines and inflammatory factors, etc), and the effects of exercise training and dietary interventions on target organ damage in obese children. Thus, it is important to take effective measures to prevent and control childhood obesity, and finally to reduce the prevalence of target organ damage.