Effect of modest changes in BMI on cardiovascular disease risk markers in severely obese, minority adolescents

Document Type

Article

Department

Family Medicine

Abstract

Summary: Background: African American and Hispanic adolescents have disproportionately higher rates of obesity compared to white adolescents. In adults, modest weight loss of five percent improves CVD risk marker levels. Less is known about the effects of modest changes in BMI on CVD risk markers in adolescents, particularly newer markers such as C reactive protein (CRP), lipoprotein (a) and homocysteine.
Objective: To examine the effect of modest BMI change on CVD risk marker levels in a group of severely obese, African American and Hispanic adolescents.
Study design: A six-month longitudinal analysis
Subjects: Eighty-three African American and Hispanic adolescents were recruited (mean age ± sd: 15.1 ± 2.0 years); 50 (60%) were reevaluated at 6 ± 2 months.
Results: At baseline, mean BMI was 42.3 ± 7.8 kg/m(2). BMI directly correlated with CRP (p = < 0.001); homocysteine (p = 0.02); insulin (p = 0.05); and systolic and diastolic blood pressures (both p = Conclusions: A modest decrease in BMI is associated with improvement in CRP and insulin levels. Obese adolescents should be encouraged to continue with modest weight loss goals as they result in improvement in cardiovascular disease risk markers.

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Obesity Research and Clinical Practice

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS