ESPE Abstracts

Background: Recently childhood obesity shows trends of lowering age at start. Preschool children are still very physically active. A possible association between total and abdominal obesity and metabolic risk at preschool age could be of value for preventive measures.

Objective and hypotheses: To investigate the relationship between body composition and some metabolic risk factors at preschool age.

Method: A total of 40 (50% boys) healthy preschool children were invited for participation (mean age 5.31±0.74 years). Body weight, height and waist circumference (WC) were measured using standard procedures. BMI was assessed by CDC references. A questionnaire was filled in by the parents. Children’s physical activity was measured by pedometry. Fasting blood samples were collected and lipids, BGL, insulin, SHBG, adiponectin (ADN), leptin were measured. DXA of the fat mass (FM) was performed.

Results: Children with overweight/obesity were 30% of all (17.5% obese), and 10% were underweight. Children completing the recommendation for at least 10 000 steps/daily during the week were 9.7%, and during the weekends – 16.1%. FM (g) correlated positively with BMI and WC (P<0.001). When the IDEFICS reference (www.ideficsstudy.eu) was used to rank ADN results as low (first quartile), lower levels of adiponectin correlated with weight, BMI and WC (P<0.001), with fasting insulin (r=0.458, P=0.032) and HOMA-IR (r=0.533, P=0.015). There was a significant correlation between FM and lower ADN (r=0.737, P<0.001) and with the same approach with elevated leptin levels (r=0.602, P=0.005), as well as with elevated triglycerides (r=0.461, P=0.041), controlled for sex and age. Lower ADN correlated also with tissue fat (r=0.432, P=0.045), FM (r=0.469, P=0.028), and with WC (r=0.490, P=0.021), after controlling for physical activity. SHBG correlated inversely with weight (r=−0.428, P=0.033), BMI (r=−0.449, P=0.025) and WC (r=−0.540, P=0.005).

Conclusion: To summarise, metabolic risk in preschool children is established and highly associates with both FM and physical activity.

Funding: This work was supported by the Ministry of Health Fund ‘Medical Science’.