Regional adiposity and markers of inflammation in pre-school age children

Abstract

In adults, upper body fat partially increases metabolic disease risk through increasing systemic inflammation. Our objective was to determine if this relationship exists in preschool-aged children. A subset of children (n = 71, 35 males), 3.7 ± 1.0 y, were studied from n = 515 children recruited from randomly selected daycares in Montréal, QC. According to WHO charts for 2-5 y, 49 children were healthy weight (HW) and 21 were overweight (OW). Adiposity was determined through dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Blood concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) were determined via enzyme-linked immunosorbent and multiplex assays, respectively. OW children had higher (p = 0.03) android:gynoid ratio 0.50 ± 0.09 compared to HW children 0.56 ± 0.12, indicating excess fat was predominantly stored in the abdominal depot. CRP was higher (p = 0.01) in OW children 1.45 ± 2.02 mg/L compared to HW 0.74 ± 1.38 mg/L. Percent fat was correlated with CRP (r = 0.32; p < 0.01) and TNFα (r = 0.25; p = 0.04) concentrations. CRP also correlated with android adiposity (r = 0.24; p = 0.04) and TNFα correlated with gynoid adiposity (r = 0.24; p = 0.04). We observed that greater adiposity is associated with higher systemic inflammation in pre-school aged children. Future longitudinal studies are needed to understand the long term consequences of excess total and regional body fat in young children.

Figure 1

Pearson (TNFα) and Spearman (CRP) correlations between inflammatory markers and percent fat, android fat mass and gynoid fat mass. n = 68, -represents a correlation in the whole group; o represents healthy weight; x represents overweight.