Children With Morbid Obesity Benefit Equally As Children With Overweight and Obesity From an Ongoing Care Program

Context: Despite stabilization of childhood overweight and obesity prevalence, there is a shift toward more severe degrees of obesity, which results in an increasing prevalence of children with morbid obesity. Prior studies demonstrated that lifestyle modification without ongoing treatment has only a modest and not sustainable effect in children with morbid obesity. This suggests that a chronic care model is necessary for long-term effects on weight management and health.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of an ongoing lifestyle intervention in children with morbid obesity in comparison with children with overweight and obesity.

Design And Setting: This was a nonrandomized prospective intervention study with 12- and 24-month followup at the Centre for Overweight Adolescent and Children's Healthcare.

Patients And Intervention: Children and adolescents (n = 100 females and 72 males) with overweight, obesity, or morbid obesity were given long-term, outpatient, tailored lifestyle intervention.

Main Outcome Measure: Body mass index (BMI) z score was measured.

Results: In children with morbid obesity, 12- and 24-month interventions resulted in a decrease of BMI z score of -0.13 ± 0.25 (P = .001) and -0.23 ± 0.32 (P = .01) respectively, whereas weight status category improved to obese in 21% and 25% of the children. Cardiovascular risk parameters including serum total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and diastolic blood pressure significantly improved after 1-year intervention in the complete group. Most important, BMI z score as well as cardiovascular risk parameters improved to a similar degree in children with overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity.

Conclusions: Children with overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity benefit equally from an ongoing, outpatient, tailored lifestyle intervention, and demonstrate significant weight loss and improvement of cardiovascular risk parameters.