Overweight and obesity enlarges teenagers' hearts

http://www.eurekalert.org/ 6/3/06, 6:48 AM

"We hypothesize that obesity carries no adverse mortality impact above
the age of 60 years--possibly even from age 55 to 50 years. This remains
to be tested," they added."

Interesting Quote from below article.

Bill
............................


Public release date: 2-Jun-2006

Contact: Amy Murphy
amurphy@xxxxxxx
301-581-3476

American College of Cardiology
Overweight and obesity enlarges teenagers' hearts
Bigger, heavier hearts portend heart disease risk even before adulthood
(BETHESDA, MD) The effects of excess weight on heart health can be seen
even in adolescents, with abnormal enlargement and impaired pumping
function evident in subjects by age 20, according to a new study in the
June 6, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"Heart damage starts very early in the natural history of obesity. We
need to work on our young people, to prevent catastrophic effects later
on," said Giovanni de Simone, M.D., F.A.C.C. from the New York
Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New
York, New York and the Federico II University Hospital School of
Medicine in Naples, Italy.
The Strong Heart study (SHS) is a longitudinal study of cardiovascular
risk factors and cardiovascular disease that enrolled 4,549 people in
American Indian communities in Arizona, Oklahoma, and North and South
Dakota. This analysis included data from examinations of 460
participants age 14 to 20 years (245 girls and 215 boys). The
researchers used ultrasound and other methods to measure the size, shape
and pumping function of the teenagers' hearts.
The left ventricles of the hearts of both overweight and obese teenagers
were larger and heavier than those of normal weight participants; but
the obese teenagers also showed signs of impaired heart function. The
changes were not entirely explained by changes by high blood pressure.
"Our findings demonstrate that, even among adolescents at a mean age
under 18, severity of abnormality in body build also parallels early
cardiac changes, including high prevalence of left ventricular
hypertrophy and increased hemodynamic load, paralleling previous
findings and suggesting that increased left ventricular mass occurs to
sustain the increased cardiac workload," the study authors wrote.
"The main findings are that, when obesity is present, something happens
in our hearts to increase its size and wall thickness, which cannot be
understood by measurement of blood pressure. This excess of cardiac
mass, which we call 'inappropriate' in connection to cardiac workload,
is also associated with a general impairment of the function of the
heart to push blood into the arterial tree and also to distend its
cavity to receive the blood returning from the periphery," Dr. de Simone
said.
He said that these results underscore the need to fight excess weight in
children, since the damaging effects are evident even before adulthood.
Although the participants in this study were all members of American
Indian communities, Dr. de Simone said that he believes similar effects
would be seen in overweight and obese children from other communities.
"The analysis was performed in an American Indian population and whether
these results can be generalized to other ethnic groups needs to be
demonstrated. However, similar analyses previously performed in other
ethnic groups, such as Caucasians and African Americans, have suggested
similar association between left ventricular mass and adiposity,
independently of other cardiovascular risk factors," the authors wrote.
In an editorial in the journal, Stephan von Haehling, M.D., Wolfram
Doehner, M.D., Ph.D., and Stefan D. Anker, M.D., Ph.D. from the Imperial
College School of Medicine in London, United Kingdom and the Charit
Medical School and Campus Virchow-Klinikum in Berlin, Germany wrote that
the results from this study are in line with those from other studies
that have documented that overweight and obese children and adolescents
tend to have enlarged hearts and that enlarged hearts are a sign of
increased risk of chronic heart failure.
"But patients with chronic heart failure, who have a poor prognosis per
se, appear to benefit from being overweight. The most intriguing
question in this respect is to define a time point after which obesity
does not pose as a risk factor anymore," the editorial authors wrote.
"For young people with presence of established risk factors for future
cardiovascular illness (like hypertension, hyperlipidemia or diabetes),
it seems very likely that obesity confers a somewhat higher risk for
death compared with such people with normal weight. Whether the same is
true for older people is not known. We hypothesize that obesity carries
no adverse mortality impact above the age of 60 years--possibly even
from age 55 to 50 years. This remains to be tested," they added.
Robert J Bryg, M.D. from the University of Nevada School of Medicine,
who was not connected to this study, said it demonstrates that there are
significant cardiac consequences of childhood obesity.
"The increased left ventricular mass and left ventricular hypertrophy
would suggest that long term consequences will occur in this cohort.
Even though this is a population of Native Americans, I still believe
that it is generalizable to the overall US population. This suggests
that the epidemic of obesity in the US will have long term consequences
on heart disease in this country," Dr. Bryg said.

###
Disclosure Box
Sources quoted in this news release do not report any potential
conflicts of interest regarding this topic.
This work was supported by cooperative from the National Institutes of
Health.




 

--
S Jersey USA Zone 5 Shade
This article is posted under fair use rules in accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and is strictly for the educational
and informative purposes. This material is distributed without profit.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Overweight and obesity enlarges teenagers hearts
    ... Suspect these investigators don't see patients in the over 60 age range ... "We hypothesize that obesity carries no adverse mortality impact above ... heavier hearts portend heart disease risk even before adulthood ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Fat Racist Democrat Children Show Early Signs of Heart Disease
    ... Children who are obese or who are at risk for obesity show early signs of heart disease similar to obese adults with heart disease, a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found. ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: Obesity Itself Seems to Impair Heart Function
    ... > Even in the absence of apparent heart disease, ... > "The study showed a direct relationship between the level of obesity ... > Circulation, are based on a study of 109 overweight or obese subjects, ... > and 33 normal-weight subjects, who underwent a variety of tests ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Obesity Itself Seems to Impair Heart Function
    ... "Obesity Itself Seems to Impair Heart Function", Reuters UK, November ... Circulation, are based on a study of 109 overweight or obese subjects, ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Re: Red Meat NO GOOD, Veggies no protection.... NOW WHAT?
    ... >> The fruit and vegetable study, also published in the same journal ... > with a wide confidence interval) of breast cancer among vegetarian women. ... RELATIVE risk of breast cancer among Japanese woman ... Associations between diet and cancer, ischemic heart disease, ...
    (sci.med)