Last month’s biggest story involving research at Imperial looked at the increase in children admitted to hospital with obesity-related conditions.
During the period studied there was a four-fold increase in admissions for children experiencing obesity-related conditions, from 872 in 2000 to 3806 in 2009. Teenage girls with pregnancies complicated by obesity accounted for hospital admissions in 2009.
Surveys suggest that around 30 per cent of children aged 2-15 are overweight and up to 20 per cent are obese.
“The burden of obesity is usually thought to have its serious consequences in adulthood, but we now see it manifesting earlier, in childhood,” said Dr Sonia Saxena, from the School of Public Health at Imperial, who led the study. “It’s clear that rising obesity levels are causing more medical problems in children, but the rise we observed probably also reflects increasing awareness among clinicians, who have become better at recognising obesity.”
The report appeared on the BBC, in the Evening Standard and the Nursing Times, as well as various regional outlets who broke down the statistics by area.