Abstract
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.
Highlights
Evidence shows that the increase in the incidence of overweight and obesity in adults is occurring in preschool age children[1]
Our findings show children who were overweight had significantly higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) than healthy weight counterparts
Both CRP and TNFα positively correlated with percent fat mass with the correlation in CRP being stronger in overweight children
Summary
Evidence shows that the increase in the incidence of overweight and obesity in adults is occurring in preschool age children[1]. The most recent population-level assessment reporting on body mass index (BMI) in Canadian 2–5 year olds found approximately 17% were overweight or obese[1]. At this time, research examining the implications of carrying excess adipose tissue has been dominated by studies in adult populations with results from these studies often being extrapolated to children. Several studies have found a relationship between increased adipose tissue mass and systemic inflammatory markers[2] This relationship is especially salient to upper body/android adipose tissue which has been described to be associated with greater inflammation than lower body/gynoid adipose tissue[3,4]. Increase with greater whole body mass and that there will be a stronger association between inflammation and android adiposity compared to gynoid adiposity
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