Weight changes of children in 1 year during COVID-19 pandemic.

INTRODUCTION: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has changed everyday life. The Korean government urged schools to close as a measure of social distancing, and children and adolescents seemed to gain weight due to home confinement. We aimed to investigate the trends in weight changes in children during the pandemic period. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective study included 139 children aged between 6 and 12 years who visited the pediatric endocrine clinic for regular growth follow-up for 1 year during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed changes in the body mass index (BMI), BMI z-score, and proportion of children who were overweight or obese over a period of 1 year. RESULTS: The BMI and BMI z-scores of the 139 children increased significantly over the year. The increase was maximum during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with little change between the third and sixth month of the pandemic. The proportion of children who were overweight or obese increased over time, from 24.5% at the COVID-19 pandemic baseline to 38.1% 1 year later (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19-related lockdown resulted in significant weight gain in Korean children. Changes in BMI showed different trends depending on the degree of school closure. An overall shift from normal weight to overweight or obesity was observed during the pandemic period.

Variability in objective and subjective measures affects baseline values in studies of patients with COPD.

RATIONALE: Understanding the reliability and repeatability of clinical measurements used in the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of disease progression is of critical importance across all disciplines of clinical practice and in clinical trials to assess therapeutic efficacy and safety. OBJECTIVES: Our goal is to understand normal variability for assessing true changes in health status and to more accurately utilize this data to differentiate disease characteristics and outcomes. METHODS: Our study is the first study designed entirely to establish the repeatability of a large number of instruments utilized for the clinical assessment of COPD in the same subjects over the same period. We utilized SPIROMICS participants (n = 98) that returned to their clinical center within 6 weeks of their baseline visit to repeat complete baseline assessments. Demographics, spirometry, questionnaires, complete blood cell counts (CBC), medical history, and emphysema status by computerized tomography (CT) imaging were obtained. RESULTS: Pulmonary function tests (PFTs) were highly repeatable (ICC's >0.9) but the 6 minute walk (6MW) was less so (ICC = 0.79). Among questionnaires, the Saint George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) was most repeatable. Self-reported clinical features, such as exacerbation history, and features of chronic bronchitis, often produced kappa values <0.6. Reported age at starting smoking and average number of cigarettes smoked were modestly repeatable (kappa = 0.76 and 0.79). Complete blood counts (CBC) variables produced intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) values between 0.6 and 0.8. CONCLUSIONS: PFTs were highly repeatable, while subjective measures and subject recall were more variable. Analyses using features with poor repeatability could lead to misclassification and outcome errors. Hence, care should be taken when interpreting change in clinical features based on measures with low repeatability. Efforts to improve repeatability of key clinical features such as exacerbation history and chronic bronchitis are warranted.