Obese children and impaired glucose tolerance - Brief Article

Nutrition Health Review, Spring, 2003

Although the epidemic of child obesity has been reported in many medical journals, the link between obese children and impaired glucose tolerance remains less well known.

Researchers in New Haven, Connecticut, studied glucose metabolism in 55 obese children between ages 4 and 10 years and 112 adolescents between ages 11 and 18 years. One quarter of the children in the study and 21 percent of the adolescents were found to have impaired glucose tolerance. Asymptomatic type 2 diabetes was found in 4 percent of the adolescents. A parental history of type 2 diabetes, body mass index, and age had no relation to impaired glucose tolerance.

These results confirm the widely held suspicion that many obese children and adolescents have impaired glucose tolerance.

(Source: New England Journal of Medicine, 346:854; March 14, 2002.)