Infectious diseases in obese and normal-weight children

Aim. Assess whether obese children develop infectious diseases with a higher frequency and/or longer duration and/or higher severity than normal weight children. Methods. Longitudinal observation of 24 overweight/obese children (15F, 9M; age 9.5 years +/- 0.4; BMI 23.7 +/- 2.6) and 23 normal weight children (14F, 9M; age 9.3 years +/- 0.4; BMI 15.8 +/- 0.9). Signs and symptoms of infectious diseases were categorised in a form with 3 different degrees of severity. Data were analysed by U Mann-Whitney test and chi squared test for linear trend. Results. The two groups did not show any difference in the number of infectious diseases, but the obese children showed a significant longer duration of the infections (p0.02) and a higher score of their severity (0.003). Conclusions. Obese children show a higher morbidity in terms of length and severity of infectious diseases. This greater severity of infections could be an underestimated early complication of childhood obesity that could also increase isolation and passivity of obese children due to development of more complex family relations. More research is needed in order to correlate more severe clinical manifestations with immunological laboratory data.