Obesity begins in the womb

The obesity epidemic in the United States has spread to include children under 6 years old and particularly infants, according to a Harvard study.

The study of 120,680 kids is the largest to date to report on such young children. During the 22-year period covered, medical records reveal that the prevalence of overweight children less than 6 years old jumped 59 percent, from 6.3 to 10 percent.

The results show surprising increases in the number of overweight children up to 6 months old. From 1980 to 2001, the increase in overweight infants ballooned 74 percent.

"The obesity epidemic has spared no age group," says Matthew Gillman, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "These results show that efforts to prevent obesity must start even before birth."

Increases in overweight children were greater among girls than boys, and larger among Hispanic children than among blacks and whites. The kids were healthy, middle-class children.

Gillman and his colleagues at the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care collected their information from the medical records of 120,680 children who made 366,199 visits to 14 offices of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, an HMO in eastern Massachusetts. Gillman believes the findings apply to other areas of the country because national studies have found similar trends among 2- to 6-year-olds. In both the Massachusetts and a national survey, the number of overweight 2- to 6-year-olds rose about 25 percent from 1992 to 2001.

"This information is important to public health because previous studies show that accelerated weight gain in the first few months after birth is associated with obesity later in life," notes Gillman. And obesity has been persistently linked to increases in the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.