Impact of soda in childhood seen in adolescence

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young children who load up on sugary soft drinks risk developing signs of heart disease and diabetes in adolescence, according to a long-term study in which doctors followed a group of girls from 5 to 13 years of age.

"Parents should be aware that diet and lifestyle choices during early childhood have an impact on later disease risk," study chief Alison K. Ventura told Reuters Health. "In this study we are seeing the effects of these choices during early adolescence."

"Additionally, parents should be aware of early risk factors (e.g., accelerated weight and fat mass gain) that appear to predict disease risk later on," added Ventura, who is a doctoral candidate at Penn State's Center for Childhood Obesity Research.

Ventura and two colleagues have identified "risk profiles" for metabolic syndrome in adolescence, based on their study of 154 white non-Hispanic girls.

Metabolic syndrome is a term used to describe a cluster of traits linked to the development of heart disease and diabetes in adults, such as high blood sugar, overweight and obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), and high triglycerides combined with low "good" HDL cholesterol.

Ventura explained that, based on these indicators for metabolic syndrome, girls can be classified into 1 of 4 groups: (1) a lower risk group, showing healthy values on all indicators; (2) a "dyslipidemia risk" group, showing high triglycerides and low HDL, but normal weight status; (3) a hypertension risk group, showing high blood pressure and waist circumference values; and (4) a higher metabolic syndrome risk group, showing values close to or meeting the metabolic syndrome criteria for adolescents.

When Ventura's team looked at information on these girls' during childhood, from ages 5 to 13, they found several factors that predicted which one of the four groups they would fall into at age 13.

"Girls in the highest risk group had more family history of obesity, hypertension and diabetes, higher weight status and fat mass across childhood, greater and faster change in weight status and fat mass across childhood, and increased intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages from ages 5 to 9, compared to the other three groups," Ventura reported.

At ages 5, 7, and 9 years, the higher risk group consumed 27 percent, 45 percent, and 50 percent more daily servings of sugary drinks, respectively, than the lower risk group.

Combined with weight gain data, the pattern "suggests the possibility that consistently high intake of sweetened beverages early in life may constitute a risk factor for excessive weight gain and increased metabolic syndrome risk," the investigators conclude.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, December 2006.