Children can suffer from Metabolic Syndrome too

The consequences in children health are not as clear as in the adults, but childhood obesity has been associated with risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, orthopedic problems and mental disorders. A high Body Mass Index (BMI) in the adolescence can predict a high mortality in the adult age, as well as high rates of cardiovascular diseases, even if the excess weight is lost. A number of pathologies related to obesity that were thought to be only applicable to the adults, can be found now in children, such as the “metabolic syndrome”. In fact, more than 60 % of overweight children have some other factor cardiovascular risk, like hypertension, hyperlipidemia or hyperinsulinemia, and more than 20% have two or more.

The term “metabolic syndrome” is used to describe the conjunction of abdominal obesity with hypertension, dislipemia and insulin resistance, which generally meets with endotelial malfunction, one of the first events that take place in the development of aterosclerosis. The obesity is considered, in fact, a low-grade chronic inflammatory process, since it is characterized by an increase in inflammation markers produced by adipocytes, such as C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6 and even the macrophage infiltration in the adipose tissue. In obesity, an increase in reactive oxygen species is observed, which increase proinflammatory activation pathways. Hypertrigliceridemia attributable to the increase of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins (TRL) is the most invariable metabolic alteration in obesity.

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