Obesity in children & adolescents

Over the world, the disease profile is changing rapidly, attracting attention of medical professionals and decision makers. This is particularly true for middle- and low-income countries, which make up the majority of the world's population. A new epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes is the key to this amazing change. Of these entities, obesity causes serious public health problems, each year 6 million people die worldwide 1. Obesity is an independent risk factor for CVD. Obesity is associated with an increase in morbidity and mortality and a decrease in life expectancy. In the past 20 years of the last century, medical expenses have increased significantly due to obesity of children and adolescents and related problems 2

For children and adolescents, overweight and obesity are defined using normal body mass index (BMI) specific to age and sex. Age-specific gender A child with a BMI greater than or equal to the 95th percentile is defined as obese. Those with a BMI greater than or equal to 85 and less than 95% are overweight and are defined as having a risk of complications associated with obesity 3

Obesity in children, adolescents and adults has become one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century. Over the past 30 years the prevalence of childhood obesity has increased markedly worldwide (1). Obesity is a multifactorial disease also described as a phenotype of multiple disease states (1,2). The review aims to analyze the current medical literature on overweight and obesity in pediatric age groups and highlight clinically relevant clinical points. Consider the definition of childhood obesity, morbidity rate, epidemiology and comorbidity. Discuss clinical and laboratory assessment and treatment issues. Given the breadth of the subject of the review, the reader will refer to recent articles on the field chosen for further detailed review as necessary.

Obesity is a complex multifactorial disease affected by genetic and non-genetic factors (1,2). Figure 1 shows an overview of determinants of childhood obesity. In children and adolescents, overweight conditions are often caused by a combination of lack of physical activity, an unhealthy feeding pattern resulting in excessive energy intake, or a combination of excessive energy. Childhood obesity is also a multifactorial disease, a result of genetic and non-genetic factors, and complex interactions among these factors. Genetic and social factors (socio-economic status, race / ethnicity, media and marketing, and the physical environment) also affect energy consumption and expenditure (8). Obesity is thought to be a result of complex interactions between the environment and the body's obesity tendency based on genetics and epigenetic programming (9)