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Review
. 2022 Aug 16;14(8):e28071.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.28071. eCollection 2022 Aug.

A Systematic Review on Whether an Association Exists Between Adolescent Obesity and Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension

Sana Zafar  1 , Venkatesh Panthangi  1 , Adrienne R Cyril Kurupp  2 , Anjumol Raju  2 , Gaurav Luthra  1 , Mahrukh Shahbaz  1 , Halah Almatooq  3 , Paul Foucambert  1 , Faith D Esbrand  1 , Safeera Khan  1
Affiliations
Review

A Systematic Review on Whether an Association Exists Between Adolescent Obesity and Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension

Sana Zafar et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

Pseudotumor cerebri syndrome (PTCS)/idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is a clinical presentation appertaining to signs/symptoms of raised intracranial pressure, like headache and papilledema. It is an uncommon but clinically significant cause of morbidity such as permanent vision loss. It is crucial to understand if idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is on the rise in adolescents, it is probably due to the rising prevalence of obesity worldwide. Our study aimed to find an association between obesity and IIH in adolescents. We utilized Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis 2020 (PRISMA) guidelines to run this systematic review. Many publications related to the topic in the discussion were scrutinized through a comprehensive database search. We filtered them down to a final count of 10 articles after utilizing our inclusion/exclusion criteria and assessing the quality of work. In these final papers, we identified several possibilities to explain the link between obesity and IIH in adolescents. Overweight and obese adolescents were found to have a significantly increased risk of IIH development, with a more severe clinical picture seen in morbidly obese female patients.

Keywords: adolescent obesity; headache; idiopathic intracranial hypertension; lumbar puncture; obesity; overweight; papilledema; pseudotumor cerebri; ptcs; vision loss.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Weight properties
BMI: body mass index. Figure created by Sana Zafar.
Figure 2
Figure 2. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for systematic review
PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, PMC: PubMed Central.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Data showing the distribution of obese female/male adolescents with IIH as compared to non-obese female/male adolescents with IIH
IIH: idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Figure created by Sana Zafar.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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