Obesity associated with poor brain development in children: Study

Researchers have discovered an association between poorer brain health and higher weight and body mass index (BMI) in pre-adolescence using MRI data from the largest long-term study of brain development and child health conducted in the United States.The findings are being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).”We know being obese as an adult is associated with poor brain health,” said researcher Simone Kaltenhauser, a post-graduate research fellow in radiology and biomedical imaging at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.”However, previous studies on children have often focused on small, specific study populations or single aspects of brain health.” Childhood obesity is a growing concern in the U.S.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately one in every five American children is obese.Kaltenhauser’s study used imaging data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study that included 11,878 children aged 9-10 years from 21 centers across the country to represent the sociodemographic diversity in the U.S.