Carotid intima-media thickness at 7 years of age: relationship to C-reactive protein rather than adiposity.

OBJECTIVE: According to the concept of adipose tissue expandability, the vascular complications of obesity are related less to the amount of stored fat than to the low-grade inflammation that excess fat storage may elicit. We tested this concept in 7-year-old children by assessing whether carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) is related to obesity measures or to circulating highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP), as a marker of low-grade inflammation. STUDY DESIGN: The study group comprised 135 asymptomatic Caucasian children (72 girls and 63 boys; mean age, 7.1±1.1 years) with normal height and weight distributions. Relationships were assessed among cIMT, hsCRP, obesity measures (ie, body mass index [BMI], total fat by bioelectric impedance, and visceral fat by ultrasound), insulin resistance (by the homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance), and fasting serum lipid levels. RESULTS: cIMT was correlated with hsCRP, but not with BMI or body fat; the regression coefficients between cIMT and hsCRP (adjusted for age, sex, BMI, body fat, and serum lipid levels) were fairly similar across all BMI categories (ß=0.370-0.411; all P<.001 to<.0001). Serum hsCRP increased with increasing BMI, total fat, and visceral fat (all P<.001). CONCLUSION: At age 7 years, cIMT is already associated with low-grade inflammation, as measured by hsCRP, but not with BMI or body fat. These findings imply that public health strategies aimed at early prevention of cardiovascular disease may need to target low-grade inflammation rather than only BMI or adiposity.

Prenatal programming of renal function: the estimated glomerular filtration rate is influenced by size at birth in apparently healthy children.

Prenatal growth is known to affect glomerular function in adult life. It is unknown, however, whether this association is also present in children. In a cross-sectional study, we examined whether birth weight (BW) is associated with serum creatinine (measured by an improved Jaffe method) and GFR (estimated by the Haycock-Schwartz formula; eGFR) in 73 apparently healthy school-age children (35 boys and 38 girls; age 9.5 +/- 0.4 yr). All children were born after singleton term pregnancies (gestational age 39.6 +/- 0.2 wk) with normal BW (3.2 +/- 0.04 kg). A significant decrease in serum creatinine and increase in the eGFR was evident by tertiles of BW-SD score (SDS) (p = 0.001 and p < 0.0001). eGFR was correlated with BW-SDS (r = 0.45; p < 0.0001), so that each unit increase in BW-SDS was associated with an increase in eGFR of 10 (95% CI 5-14) ml/min per 1.73 m. In summary, estimates of glomerular function are in apparently healthy school-age children influenced by size at birth. These findings suggest early effects for the prenatal programming of renal function in humans.