Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Child obesity has become a global health problem. The younger treatment starts the better outcome, but few treatment modalities are efficient. Whether obese children have an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders with worse treatment outcome is not studied. Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders in obese children. As a second objective gender differences were evaluated.

Methods: Seventy-six children (37 girls; 39 boys) were recruited at referral to a university outpatient clinic. The parents were interviewed regarding the child’s psychiatric morbidity using The development and well-being assessment, and completed parental questionnaires such as The Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire/ASQ14 and the Five to fifteen parent questionnaire all of these evaluating ADHD, ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The parents were screened for adult ADHD using the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale. Anthropometric and metabolic data was collected at the first visit and after one year of conventional life-style treatment.

Results: Twelve percent 1% and 18% of the children were diagnosed with ASD and ADHD respectively. Thirty percent of the children had at least one neurodevelopmental disorder and 20% had a parent who screened positive for adult ADHD. There was statistically significant more obese males with neurodevelopmental disorders (P<0.05). In the total group, mean (SD) body mass index (BMI) was 3.4 (0.6), insulin 31 (18.5) and age 12.4 (3.0), with a range of 2–6 kg/m², 6–110 and 5.1–16.5 years, respectively. There was no statistical difference in mean BMI, insulin, age and other metabolic variables between those obese children with neurodevelopmental disorders and without. No difference was found in treatment outcome after one year between those with neurodevelopmental disorders and without (delta BMI SDS 0.06 (0.36) versus 0.13 (0.33), P=ns). Conclusion: Neurodevelopmental disorders are overrepresented in clinical populations of obese children, especially in males. Although we did not find any significant worse BMI outcome in those with neurodevelopmental disorders, it should be taken into account that many parents share their children’s symptoms, when designing educational materials for parents.