- (HealthDayNews) -- An estimated one in eight U.S. schoolchildren
has risk factors that could signal heart disease in the years to come.
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- That's the sobering conclusion of a study presented Nov.
9 at the American Heart Association's annual conference in Orlando, Fla.
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- Researchers from the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill found approximately 13 percent of the schoolchildren studied
have at least three of the risk factors for what doctors call metabolic
syndrome, a precursor of cardiovascular disease.
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- Girls had a 1.6 times higher risk than boys, says Joanne
S. Harrell, director of the university's Center for Research on Chronic
Illness, who presented the findings.
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- Metabolic syndrome includes such risk factors as high
blood pressure, elevated triglycerides (a fatty substance found in the
blood), obesity, and low levels of the so-called "good" HDL cholesterol.
Those who have metabolic syndrome are at early risk of heart disease as
well as diabetes.
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- "This study shows a much higher prevalence of metabolic
syndrome in children than other studies have shown," Harrell says,
adding that's partly because so many children in the study were overweight.
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- If nothing is done, she says, there's a good chance the
children could develop both heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
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- Harrell's team followed more than 3,200 students, evenly
split between boys and girls 8 to 17 years old, in a rural North Carolina
county with no cities of more than 50,000 people. The researchers decided
to study students in rural areas with high minority populations because
they knew that those children have slightly higher obesity rates and that
type 2 diabetes is more common in minorities.
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- They evaluated each student's body mass index (BMI) --
a ratio of weight to height -- to determine if it was high enough to be
labeled obese, as well as other risk factors such as blood pressure, blood
fats and how well their body utilized glucose. A BMI of 30 and above is
considered obese; 25 and higher is overweight.
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- More than half of the children had a least one of the
six risk factors for metabolic syndrome, 27.4 percent had two or more,
and 13.5 percent had at least three risk factors. Some children who had
three or more factors were only 8 or 9 years old.
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- The most common risk factor, found in more than 43 percent
of the children, was a low HDL cholesterol level. More than one in four
of the students were classified as overweight.
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- In all, 16.3 percent of the girls and 10.7 percent of
the boys had at least three risk factors for metabolic syndrome. That was
due, Harrell says, to the higher levels of excess weight in the girls.
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- "There's no surprise in this study. The evidence
[of heart-disease risk factors in children] just keeps piling up,"
says Dr. Henry C. McGill, a senior scientist emeritus at the Southwest
Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio.
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- McGill recently wrote an editorial in the Journal of
the American Medical Association, commenting on two other new studies linking
risk factors found in children that help predict heart problems later.
One, the so-called Bogalusa Heart Study, followed Louisiana children into
young adulthood and found that high levels of so-called "bad"
LDL cholesterol was the best predictor later in life of a condition called
increased carotid artery thickness.
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- In the second study, Finnish researchers followed more
than 2,000 children and teens and measured blood pressure, cholesterol,
weight levels and smoking habits. They found if the children had several
risk factors earlier in life, they were at increased risk of hardening
of the arteries that can lead to heart problems later.
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- McGill says the studies should definitely be a wake-up
call for parents and pediatricians. "My message is, we have got to
start early to stop heart disease in middle age."
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- "Start with smoking," he urges. "Get them
to quit."
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- Then, work on the weight. "The epidemic of obesity
at all ages -- especially in children -- is a time bomb that will soon
explode to cause a renewal of the epidemic of coronary heart disease and
wipe out the gains of the last 30 years, during which time the mortality
rate of CHD [coronary heart disease] has decreased by more than 50 percent,"
he says.
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- Harrell suggests that parents should help their kids
improve their eating habits and keep them active, for instance, work as
a family to get regular exercise.
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- Also, she adds, "Advocate to your school for more
vigorous and more frequent regular activity. It's easier to work on activity
first."
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- More information
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- The American Heart Association has information on http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/hsn/hl_hsn/storytext/SIG=7v8p6n/*http://
www.amhrt.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4596>children
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