Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome among children is rising alarmingly worldwide, so the need is high for an objective and easily manageable predictor, in order to control obesity’s impact on health. Childhood weight gain results from an imbalance between energy expenditure and energy intake, where the intake surpasses the energy requirements, including metabolic rate and growth. Physical inactivity impacts growth and muscle formation and can lead to pediatric obesity through low resting metabolic rate. We studied the correlation between the resting metabolic rate, LDL-cholesterol and waist circumference on a group of children with obesity in order to emphasize the importance of metabolic syndrome screening, especially in children with high percentage of body fat and low resting metabolic rate.

Materials and method: We conducted a retrospective correlational study on 168 children from the southern part of Romania, who were patients in our nutrition clinic from 2020-2021, with the age median 12, BMI median 27.2 kg/m², obesity degree median 143%, 89 male/79 female. We used indirect calorimetry to measure the resting metabolic rate.

Results and conclusion: 77 of our patients have LDL-cholesterol values over 100 mg/dl (45.83%) and 103 of them have their waist circumference over the 95th percentile (61.3%). The percentage from the predicted resting metabolic rate negatively correlates with the LDL-cholesterol values (r=-0.18, p value=0.019) and with waist circumference (r=-0.192, p value=0.013). Thus, as resting metabolic rates values decrease, waist circumference and LDL-cholesterol values increase, leading to metabolic syndrome. Recognizing the impact of resting metabolic rate on weight gain during childhood is crucial as these children are more predisposed to metabolic complications. A more intensive lifestyle intervention with focus on diet but also physical activity is needed on these patients to prevent obesity and other complications of metabolic syndrome.

Keywords: pediatric obesity, LDL-cholesterol, waist circumference, metabolic syndrome, resting metabolic rate