ESPE Abstracts

Obesity increased to alarming prevalence in many Western countries, with an emphasized disproportionate rise in its more severe forms. There is increasing body of evidence that established a tight association between childhood and adolescent obesity with various morbidities and mortality data. The purpose of this presentation is to summarize existing data regarding the association of the presence of obesity in childhood/adolescence and early-onset adverse outcomes in adulthood, with specific focus on young adults under the age of 40 years. Recent evidence supports the view that adolescent obesity nearly doubles the risk to type 1 diabetes and gestational diabetes. The risk for type 2 diabetes may increase by more than 20-fold for adolescent with morbid obesity. The risk for incident chronic kidney disease seems to increase exponentially in excessively higher BMI values. The risk for chronic kidney injury among adolescents with obesity was reported to range from 3 to 6 in girls and from 7 to 11 among boy who were otherwise healthy. Importantly, these hazard ratios persisted even among those who did not develop hypertension or diabetes during study period. Adolescent overweight and obesity were associated with 25% increased risk for any cancer than adolescents with normal weight and that risk was apparent before age 40 years. Importantly, for some types of cancer, especially those related to the gastrointestinal system the association with adolescent obesity seemed to be accentuated in the last decades. Adolescent obesity doubles the risk for all cause- mortality and with a 3.5-fold increase in the risk cardiovascular mortality. There is a growing body of evidence linking adolescent obesity to other ill-defined components of the cardiovascular system such as heart failure, hypertensive heart disease and arrythmias. The burden related to adolescent overweight and obesity (calculated as population attributable fraction; PAF) was ~60% for type 2 diabetes, 13% for type 1 diabetes, 30% to 50% for incident chronic kidney injury, 30% for stroke, 20% for cardiovascular mortality and approximately 5% for early-onset cancer. In conclusion, adolescent overweight and obesity confers major risks of excess and premature morbidity and mortality, which may be well evident before age 30 years in both sexes. The increasing prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity may impose an increase of disease burden in early young adulthood, emphasizing the need for effective interventions to be implemented at a young age.