Research has found that moderately obese and extremely obese children are at an increased risk of developing gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). This research shows extremely obese children have up to a 40 percent higher risk of GERD, and those children who are moderately obese have up to a 30 percent higher risk of developing it, compared with normal weight children.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente (Southern California's Department of Research and Evaluation in Pasaden) state that while they knew about childhood obesity increasing the risk of serious health conditions, such as cancer and diabetes, research is just showing that obesity also increases the risk of children developing GERD. This research has found that extremely obese children are at a 40 percent higher risk of developing GERD, and approximately 30 percent of moderately obese children have a higher risk of developing GERD. These statistics were compared to the results from normal weight children.
Information for this research study was gathered from over 690,000 children, ages 2-19 years old. Researchers found that 1.5 percent of boys and 1.8 percent of girls suffered from GERD. An interesting note about the research showed that not all age groups had this increased risk of developing GERD. The age groups for the study were 2-5 years old, 6-11 years old, and 12 to 19 years old. The research showed that while the risk of developing GERD increased with the 6-11 year old and the 12-19 year old groups of overweight and obese children, the study didn't show any connection between obesity and increased risk of GERD in the children in the 2-5 year old group.
The study lead author Corinna Koebnick, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, said "Knowing that GERD is associated with obesity in children, pediatricians can counsel those children to report symptoms of GERD and make lifestyle changes that target not only obesity, but target GERD."
Dr. Aymin Delgado, assistant professor of pediatric gastroenterology at the University of Miami Miller School, said that "the findings confirm what we in pediatric gastroenterology have been suspecting, because it is what we see."
More research is needed to study this increased risk for children to develop GERD, but studies have already found that being overweight increases the chance of experiencing heartburn, and some studies show that obesity in adults increases the risk of GERD.
For related information, you can read Dr. Vincent Iannelli's (a pediatrician and About's Guide to Pediatrics) information on obesity in children. For more information on this study, you can go to healthfinder.gov.
Related Information:
