Obesity is one of the greatest health concerns among children. A new study revealed that obese kids as young as 8 years old develop signs of heart disease. For this reason, parents should do their part to keep their children in normal weight.
According to Daily Item, Linyuan Jing, a postdoctoral fellow in Geisinger's Institute for Advanced Application and the lead author of the study, reported that the imaging tests of obese children revealed signs of significant heart disease and heart muscle abnormalities.
"It is both surprising and alarming to us that even the youngest obese children in our study who were 8 years old had evidence of heart disease," Jing said. "Ultimately, we hope that the effects we see in the hearts of these children are reversible. However, it is possible that there could be permanent damage."
Jing and her team conducted MRI scans among 40 children between 8 and 16. Half of the sample were obese and half were of normal weight, News Max reported. The obese kids had an average of 27 percent more muscle mass in the left ventricle region of their heart and 12 percent thicker heart muscle overall. Both cases are considered indicators of heart impairment.
Moreover, among 40 percent of the obese children, scans showed thickened heart muscle had already translated into a reduced ability to pump blood. Kids with this condition are more likely to suffer adult cardiac strain and heart disease. Jing is encouraging parents to help their children live a healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles referred to the findings as "alarming."
Fonarow and Jing agreed that the structural heart changes detected by the scans are associated with more complicated health conditions in adulthood as well as early death in adults.
The changes in heart muscle mass "suggest a significant increase in risk of heart failure, arrhythmia [irregular heartbeat] and premature cardiovascular death in children with obesity," said Fonarow, who was not involved in the study.
Jing stressed that the study suggested that even children younger than 8 years old likely have heart disease too "Understanding the long-term ramifications will be critical as we deal with the impact of the pediatric obesity epidemic," she said.
Obese children involved in the study were already struggling with health complications associated with excess weight like asthma, high blood pressure and depression. However, none of them showed customary signs of heart disease such as fatigue, dizziness or shortness of breathing.
The study did not include kids with diabetes and those too large to fit inside the MRI scanning machine, so it may actually underestimate the extent of the problem.
Jing is encouraging parents to help their children maintain a healthy weight and to provide them with healthy foods.
