Arya M. Sharma, MD

Following yesterday’s post on the issue of weight gain and metabolic syndrome seen in kids treated with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs), today, I look at another paper by Silvia Alessi-Severini and colleagues from the University of Manitoba published in the same issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

This paper examines the use of antipsychotics in children and adolescents (aged 18 years or younger) based on data collected from the administrative health databases of Manitoba Health and the Statistics Canada census between the fiscal years of 1999 and 2008.

Over these 10 years, prevalence of antipsychotic use increased with the introduction of the SGAs from 1.9 per 1000 in 1999 to 7.4 per 1000 in 2008.

The male-to-female antipsychotic usage ratio increased from 1.9 to 2.7 as the male youth population represented the fastest-growing subgroup of antipsychotic users in the entire population of Manitoba.

Notably, the paper finds that total number of prescriptions also increased significantly despite the lack of approved indications in this population.

More than 70% of antipsychotic prescriptions to children and adolescents were written by general practitioners with the most common diagnoses being attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorders. In fact, the use of antipsychotics in combination with methylphenidate (ritalin) increased from 13% to 43%.

Thus, it appears that there is extensive off-label use of SGAs in kids and youth in Manitoba (and likely in other provinces), a finding that is of concern not least because of the significant (30-fold increased) risk of weight gain and metabolic syndrome associated with the use of these compounds.

So, while there is no doubt that these drugs may provide important clinical benefits in kids who do need them, it is hard to imagine that this degree of off-lable prescription is indeed warranted.

Again, I would love to hear from my readers regarding experience with these medications in children and youth.

AMS
Ottawa, Ontario

In the first post on several articles on obesity and mental illness published in the January issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, I would like discuss the paper by Constadina Panagiotopoulos and colleagues form the University of British Columbia, that looks at the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in children and youth treated with second-generation antipsychotics (SGA).

The study sample consisted of 117 SGA-treated and 217 SGA-naive children prospectively recruited from the Psychiatry Emergency Unit at British Columbia Children’s Hospital.

MetS was present in 19% of SGA-treated kids (including 2 cases of newly discovered type 2 diabetes) compared to less than 1% of SGA-naive kids showing an almost 30-fold increased risk of MetS in the former.

Among all of the various predictors studies, being treated with SGA and being male were the two major predictors.

Furthermore, the authors note that measurement of waist circumference as a measure of abdominal adiposity was more sensitive (92.9%) than BMI (68.8%) in detecting MetS, while fasting glucose of 5.6 mmol/L or more and HDL-C of 1.03mmol/L or less were most specific (94.1%).

It is perhaps also of interest that overall prevalence of overweight and obesity, although higher in the SGA treated kids, was almost twice as high in the general paediatric populations reported in British Columbia. This suggests that having a mental health condition alone already puts these kids at increased risk for obesity, a risk that is further drastically compounded by the use of SGA.

The authors conclude that standardized metabolic testing may be indicated in children treated with SGA and efforts to mitigate this risk should be started early in treatment.

While these ’side-effects’ are concerning and it may well be that increased risk of MetS may put these kids at long-term risk for cardiovascular problems, there are often poor alternatives for these children, who require such medications.

On the other hand, as I will discuss in tomorrow’s post, there is considerable ‘off-label’ use of antipsychotic and other psychiatric medications in kids, a practice that may require careful scrutiny given these findings.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

At the 1st National Summit on Weight Bias and Discrimination organized by the Canadian Obesity Network in Toronto almost exactly a year ago, I learnt that weight-based bullying is one of the most common and pervasive forms of bullying experience by children and youth.

This topic is further examined by Obesity Network Bootcamper Atif Kukaswadia and colleagues from Queens University, Kingston, Ontario in a paper just published in OBESITY FACTS.

The researchers report on their findings in a longitudinal analysis of the Health Behaviour in School-Age Children Survey conducted in 2006 and then again in 2007, which included 1,738 youths from 17 Ontario high schools.

Based on self-reports, excess adiposity preceded bullying involvement and obese and overweight males reported 2-fold increases in both physical and relational victimization, while obese females reported 3-fold increases in perpetration of relational bullying over the observation period.

In addition, among those free of bullying at baseline (2006), significant increases in perpetration of relational bullying were reported by obese females in 2007 relative to normal-weight females (14.8 vs. 3.8% among normal-weight girls).

These findings support previous findings on the increased risk for bullying faced by overweight and obese youth and certainly suggest that this problem, if anything, is getting worse.

Given the many deleterious (and often lasting) effects of bullying on mental and physical health, this issue is certainly something that should concern us all.

Thus, it is certainly not surprising that one of the strategic priorities identified at CON’s Weight-Bias Summit was to “address weight-bias and discrimination in education settings”.

A full report of the Summit is available here.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

Kukaswadia A, Craig W, Janssen I, & Pickett W (2011). Obesity as a determinant of two forms of bullying in ontario youth: a short report. Obesity facts, 4 (6), 469-72 PMID: 22248998

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There are good reasons to believe that for a significant number of people, the foundations of adult obesity may well be established in early childhood or even in utero.

This topic is the focus of an extensive review by Tristin Brisbois and colleagues from the University of Alberta, just published in OBESITY REVIEWS.

In their paper, the researchers screen the literature on data supporting a role for a wide range of factors in early childhood (≤5 years of age) that potentially predict the development of obesity in adulthood.

Factors of interest included exposures/insults in the prenatal period, infancy and early childhood, as well as other socio-demographic variables such as socioeconomic status (SES) or birth place that could impact all three time periods.

Their review of over 8,000 citations, resulted in relevant 135 studies, which reported a total of 42 variables as being associated with obesity in adulthood.

Of these, however, only seven variables made the cut as potential early markers of obesity.

These included maternal smoking and maternal weight gain during pregnancy, maternal body mass index, childhood growth patterns (early rapid growth and early adiposity rebound), childhood obesity and father’s employment (a proxy measure for SES in many studies).

Notably, neither early childhood nutrition or physical activity were identified as possible predictors.

Although such association studies alone by no means imply causality, the identified variables are nevertheless worth considering as reasonable targets in the development of health promotion programmes to reduce the risk of adult obesity. Clearly, the feasibility and effectiveness of such measures remains to be demonstrated.

AMS
Dallas, TX

Brisbois TD, Farmer AP, & McCargar LJ (2011). Early markers of adult obesity: a review. Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity PMID: 22171945

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One of the major concerns around the childhood obesity epidemic is that early onset obesity may be associated with greater health risks when these kids grow into obese adults compared to individuals who only become obese as adults.

This hypothesis was recently tested in a study Markus Juonala (Finland) and colleagues in a study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers examined data from four prospective cohort studies that measured childhood and adult BMI with a mean length of follow-up was 23 years.

Data were compared between four groups:

Group 1: nonobese kids who grew into nonobese adults(n=4742)
Group 2: obese kids who grew into nonobese adults (n=274)
Group 3: obese kids who grew into obese adults (n=500)
Group 4: nonobese kids who grew into obese adults (n=812)

All analyses were adjusted for age, sex, height, length of follow-up, and their respective cohorts.

The not so good new is that when childhood obesity persists into adulthood (Group 3), the risk is markedly higher than in Group 1 (never obese) - unfortunately, this is what happens to most of obese kids as 82% of them grew into obese adults.

The good news, however, is that there was absolutely no difference in the cardiovascular risk factors (diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, or intima-media thickess) between Group 1 (never obese) and Group 2 (only obese as kids but not as adults) - this suggests that any increased risk associated with being an obese kid can be virtually completely reversed if they manage to grow into nonobese adults.

Unfortunately, the health risks associated with adult-onset obesity (Group 4) were exactly as bad as with childhood-onset obesity. In other words, even if you managed to get through childhood with normal weight - gaining weight as an adult put you at the same risk as if you’d been obese all your life.

These findings certainly provide important nuances to the discussions about where obesity prevention and treatment resources should be focussed.

Obviously, if you can prevent or treat childhood obesity, thereby reducing the number of obese adults, you would substantially lower risk. But this may be easier said than done, as so far, we are not exactly sure that ’successful’ obesity treatment in childhood actually prevents adult obesity (we certainly hope it does but no one has yet shown this to be the case). In fact, in this study, two out of three obese adults were nonobese as kids!

On the other hand, even if you get through childhood with normal weight only to go on and become an obese adult, you may as well have been obese all your life. This finding suggests that potential benefits of treating adult obesity may not depend on whether or not you were an obese kid or not. Incidentally, we are also not sure that treatment success in adulthood is any different between childhood-onset and adult-onset obesity.

I am also very much intrigued by the finding that growing into a nonobese adult essentially reverses all of the risk (and damage?) that may have incurred from childhood obesity. This is in someway reminiscent of how the risks of tobacco smoking are now known to be largely reversed within a few years of smoking cessation.

So, on the one hand, it looks like it may never be too late (even as an adult) to lose the excess weight (at least if you do have weight-related risk factors - EOSS 1+).

On the other hand, any cardiometabolic benefits of preventing or treating childhood obesity will only be relevant to population health if this actually prevents or reduces the burden of obesity in adulthood - simply ‘delaying’ the onset of obesity into adulthood by focussing most of our efforts on kids (as suggested recently by Canada’s Health Ministers), may have less benefit than some of us may suspect.

I look forward to hopefully lively discussion on this issue.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

p.s. Registration for the International School on Obesity Research and Management (ISORAM 2012, Lake Louise March 25-30 is now open - click here to register).

Juonala M, Magnussen CG, Berenson GS, Venn A, Burns TL, Sabin MA, Srinivasan SR, Daniels SR, Davis PH, Chen W, Sun C, Cheung M, Viikari JS, Dwyer T, & Raitakari OT (2011). Childhood adiposity, adult adiposity, and cardiovascular risk factors. The New England journal of medicine, 365 (20), 1876-85 PMID: 22087679