In the United States, almost one-third of kids are overweight or obese. According to a study by Elizabeth Campbell of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and colleagues that was published today in PLOS Digital Health, there may be a number of underlying medical issues that are linked to pediatric obesity.

Childhood obesity is associated with a higher risk of developing comorbidities such as asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and psychiatric disorders.

It is unknown, however, whether obesity is a single disorder or consists of several phenotypes with various underlying causes.

Researchers performed a retrospective cohort analysis, gaining access to the electronic health records of 49,694 pediatric patients at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who were diagnosed with obesity, in order to find clinically similar subtypes among a sample of obese pediatric patients.

The authors compared a control group with a healthy body mass index to the common condition trajectories surrounding the occurrence of pediatric obesity using a pattern mining method.

In children who had been diagnosed with pediatric obesity, the researchers discovered eight classes of medical conditions that were very common.

These conditions included respiratory and sleep disorders, inflammatory skin conditions, asthma, seizure disorders, gastrointestinal/genitourinary symptoms, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

However, the study had a number of drawbacks, such as the potential for a false discovery rate and the use of an arbitrary 10 percent prevalence criteria for defining illnesses as “high prevalence.”

Future research is required to identify the mechanisms mediating the relationships between pediatric obesity and the co-occurring conditions found in the study.

The authors write that obesity is a complicated and socially relevant health problem that may have diverse effects on various clinical and demographic subtypes of young patients.

It has implications for better prevention, identification, and treatment of pediatric obesity since lumping all forms of overweight and obesity into one clinical disease may hide correlations between risk factors and certain subtypes of obesity. 

“Our findings can support the work of public health researchers and practitioners who seek to address the social disparities component of the obesity epidemic,” they say.

“Electronic Health Records represent valuable sources of data for use in research to investigate pediatric obesity and other pressing health issues,” says Compbell, adding “We hope that our findings not only add to ongoing work that is combatting the obesity epidemic, but to methodological advances in using large complex datasets in clinical research.”

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