Teen Obesity Rates Linked To Mother-Child Relationship 

 

A mother's relationship with her toddler in terms of sensitivity to their cues and needs, as well as the child's sense of emotional security, impacts on their subsequent chances of being obese teenagers, researchers from the Ohio State University College of Public Health, and Temple University, reported in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics.

Sarah Anderson, Ph.D., Robert Whitaker, MD, MPH, and team set out to find out whether teenage obesity might be linked to the quality of early mother-child relationship.

The researchers gathered data on 977 individuals who had taken part in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mother-child interaction had been observed and assessed when the baby/toddlers were aged 15, 24 and 36 months. Data included levels of child attachment security as well as maternal sensitivity.

The mother-child relationship was given a score in each case, during the three ages of the child - scores indicated how low maternal sensitivity was, as well as insecure levels of attachment. Those with the highest scores had the lowest maternal sensitivity and most insecure levels of attachment.

Obesity during adolescence was defined as a higher than the 95th percentile in BMI terms at 15 years of age.

Below are some highlights of their findings:

• 24.7% of the children had scores of 3 or more, indicating poor-quality maternal-child relationships
• 22% of the children scored 0, indicating no insecure attachment or low maternal sensitivity
• 26,1% of those with a score of at least 3 were obese at 15 years of age
• 15.5% of those with a score of 2 were obese at 15 years of age
• 12.1% of those with a score of 1 were obese at 15 years of age
• 13% of those with a score of 0 were obese at 15 years of age
• Those with the poorest quality scores were 2.45 more likely to be obese at 15 compared to those with the best quality scores
• Obesity risk at 15 was more closely linked to low maternal sensitivity early on in life, compared to insecure attachment

The authors concluded:

"Poor quality of the early maternal-child relationship was associated with a higher prevalence of adolescent obesity. Interventions aimed at improving the quality of maternal-child interactions should consider assessing effects on children's weight and examining potential mechanisms involving stress response and emotion regulation."

Perhaps the dysregulation in the function of stress response systems is more common among children with low maternal sensitivity and insecure attachment, the researchers suggest. A child is helped by his/her mother to develop a healthy response to stress by protecting them from extreme stress levels - this is done through continuous support, which results in appropriate stress levels and consequent behaviors, etc.

Brain Size May Predict Risk For Early Alzheimer's Disease

 

New research suggests that, in people who don't currently have memory problems, those with smaller regions of the brain's cortex may be more likely to develop symptoms consistent with very early Alzheimer's disease. The study is published in the December 21, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"The ability to identify people who are not showing memory problems and other symptoms but may be at a higher risk for cognitive decline is a very important step toward developing new ways for doctors to detect Alzheimer's disease," said Susan Resnick, PhD, with the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, who wrote an accompanying editorial.

For the study, researchers used brain scans to measure the thickness of regions of the brain's cortex in 159 people free of dementia with an average age of 76. The brain regions were chosen based on prior studies showing that they shrink in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. Of the 159 people, 19 were classified as at high risk for having early Alzheimer's disease due to smaller size of particular regions known to be vulnerable to Alzheimer's in the brain's cortex, 116 were classified as average risk and 24 as low risk. At the beginning of the study and over the next three years, participants were also given tests that measured memory, problem solving and ability to plan and pay attention.

The study found that 21 percent of those at high risk experienced cognitive decline during three years of follow-up after the MRI scan, compared to seven percent of those at average risk and none of those at low risk.

"Further research is needed on how using MRI scans to measure the size of different brain regions in combination with other tests may help identify people at the greatest risk of developing early Alzheimer's as early as possible," said study author Bradford Dickerson, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study also found 60 percent of the group considered most at risk for early Alzheimer's disease had abnormal levels of proteins associated with the disease in cerebrospinal fluid, which is another marker for the disease, compared to 36 percent of those at average risk and 19 percent of those at low risk.

The study, performed by Dickerson and collaborator David Wolk, MD, of University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a member of the AAN, using data collected as part of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, was supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (both part of the National Institutes of Health), Abbott, AstraZeneca AB, Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eisai Global Clinical Development, Elan Corporation, Genentech, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, Innogenetics, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly and Co., Medpace, Inc., Merck and Co., Inc., Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, F. Hoffman-La Roche, Schering-Plough, Synarc, Inc., the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, with participation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Dana Foundation. Funding for this particular data analysis came from the NIA and the Alzheimer's Association.