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Childhood obesity increases markers of heart disease

Category: Heart Health and Cholesterol

A new study has found that obesity in children is linked to higher CRP and other markers of heart disease very early in life.

Presenting at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, the researchers reported that these risk markers for heart disease rise in obese children long before cholesterol and lipid levels do.

"What we found is that these markers are way up, particularly the CRP," she told Voice of America. "The CRP in the pubertal, simply obese kids was about tenfold that of the non-obese kids, and the pre-pubertal ones were almost 12-fold."

CRP tests measure how much systemic inflammation there is in the body, and elevated CRP has been linked with a higher risk of heart disease and other medical conditions.

Dr Daniel Bessesen of the University of Colorado, who moderated the press conference, called the results "kind of scary."

"We know that cardiovascular disease develops not over a year or two, but over 20 and 30 years," Bessesen told theheart.org, "And if kids have that kind of chemical profile when they are 6 to 9 years of age, you wonder how our country is going to deal with that 30 or 40 years from now - those kids will be young adults."