ESPE Abstracts

Obesity, the silent pandemic of the 21st century, is being observed at increasingly younger ages. Included in the metabolic syndrome (MetS), it creates a favorable environment for the development of other components, such as impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), insulin resistance (IR), dyslipidemia (DysL) and arterial hypertension (HT). The aim of this study was to asses the influence of birth weight for gestational age (BW-GA) and age on the occurence of MetS and its components. Therefore, a retrospective observational study was conducted over a seven-year period, between January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2021, in the Diabetes and Endocrinology Departments of the „Louis Turcanu” Children’s Clinical and Emergency Hospital in Timisoara, Romania. A total of 701 pediatric patients, diagnosed with obesity, included in the study were divided in 2 main study groups: children, < 10 years and adolescents, > 10 years. According to BW-GA, these study groups were each split in three sub-groups: small (SGA), large (LGA), and appropriate (AGA) representing the control group. First of all, it was found that regardless of whether looking at the MetS as a whole, or at its individual components, there is a significant increase in their prevalence among adolescents (see Table 1).

By assesing the influence of BW on the development of MetS components, it was observed that obese SGA adolescents were the most affected in relation to IR, IGT and HT, when compared to controls (IR: 30.2% vs 18.6%; IGT: 22.2% vs 16.6%; HT: 14.3% vs 4.3%). The only discrepancy was noticed in patients with Dysl, where obese LGA adolescents were predominant (33.9% and 8.9% respectively). In conclusion, age has an important role in the development of MetS and its components, with adolescents having a significantly higher cardio-metabolic risk. In this age group, BW outside the normal range is an additional risk factor. Among the limitations of this study are the retrospective design that might lead to selection and classification bias and the significantly smaller number of patients in the SGA and LGA groups, compared to AGA controls, that might cause the study’s findings to not be representative for the general population.