James Maitlall and Sulman Mughal*
Currently, childhood obesity is a major public health issue in the Western world. There has been evidence citing that although obesity is a major problem during adolescence, it could also be the beginning of more serious conditions during adulthood. Because of this, numerous studies have been conducted to understand childhood obesity, most of which rely on cardiometabolic risk factors to predict and determine the prevalence of childhood obesity. This study aims to correlate childhood obesity with cardiometabolic factors to generate insights on forthcoming studies on this subject matter.
Methods: This study relies on research into the verified risks linked to childhood obesity. Reliance of secondary sources of data, which include journals and textbooks that are relevant to this study were also included. Database (PubMed, Medline, Google Scholar) searches including key terms such as “childhood obesity”, “cardiometabolic risks”, “childhood obesity risks” and “metabolic syndromes” were used. Strategically, articles were included as early as the 1970s to track the changes in diet and lifestyle, which could be implicated as risk factors. This study consists of different populations of children from various parts of the U.S., which in consequently explores the implications of socioeconomic differences.
Results: It has been shown that childhood obesity is associated with numerous cardiometabolic risks that can affect both children and adults. Additionally, evidence shows that childhood obesity has a high morbidity and mortality. It also has been shown that childhood obesity has been found to lead to exacerbation cardiovascular risk factors during adulthood. The evidence generated on this subject is not on par with meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials as the majority of these studies were non-experimental.
Conclusion: The study into the association between childhood obesity and cardiometabolic risk factors as well as adult cardiometabolic risk factors underlines the requisite for more research on this subject matter. Suggested studies should include the restructuring of the general management of childhood obesity as well as associated risks for current and future generations. Although there is considerable information available on childhood obesity and related cardiometabolic risk factors, the validity as well as reliability that more assertive studies such as Random Controlled Trials (RCTs) and metaanalyses have been yet to be included.
