Appolonia Adeyemi Researchers in the United States (US) and Spain said they have profiled some environmental factors, including smoking, air pollution that were linked to childhood obesity. The findings of the new study were just published in the journal ‘Environmental Health Perspectives’. The ‘Medical Xpress’ reported that the new study led by scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) was the first to comprehensively profile environmental factors that were linked to childhood obesity.
The research showed that a higher body mass index (BMI), an estimate of body fat, during childhood was associated with exposure to smoking— both in the womb and while growing up—as well as air pollution and certain characteristics seen in some urban areas. Differences in socioeconomic status did not explain these results. Senior author of the study, Dr. Lida Chatzi, who is the professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said: “People are not exposed to only one chemical during their lives; they are exposed to multiple chemicals.
“With that in mind, we try to understand the totality of environmental exposures.” The study examined 173 factors—77 during pregnancy and 96 during childhood. The factors examined included air pollutants, families’ human-made surroundings and access to green space, tobacco smoke and chemical pollutants such as heavy metals and pesticides. They studied a group of about 1,300 children aged six to 11 years from six European countries: France, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK). Data about the women and their children have been gathered, starting at pregnancy, through a collaborative longitudinal research project known as the Human Early Life Exposome (HELIX) study, the ‘Medical Xpress’ reported.
