Early Inflammation Related to Pediatric Obesity

Abstract

Objective: Obesity is a serious health problem, has reached pandemic proportions and represents a major risk for several comorbidities. Some of the serum markers are considered to be associated with low-grade chronic inflammation. Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a new and cost-effective marker for the detection of subclinical inflammation that correlates with C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. The objectives of this study were to examine the relation between children’s BMI and the bio-markers of early inflammatory predictors. Material and Methods: The retrospective study included 176 children aged 5-18 years who applied to a primary care setting in Türkiye between January 2019 and March 2019. Participants with BMIs between 85-95 percentiles were defined as overweight and those over 95 percentiles as obese. For all groups, hemogram parameters, cell volumes, and ratios were evaluated and compared. In addition, NLR and PLR were compared. Results: We found that neutrophil count and NLR were significantly different between the normal weight and overweight/obese groups (p= 0.001, p< 0.001 respectively) while hemoglobin, WBC, MPV, MCV, RDW, and PLR were similar in hemogram evaluation. Conclusion: Obesity is associated with low-grade inflammation levels and is reaching alarming rates among both children and adults. Our study suggested that neutrophil counts and NLR were significantly high-er in overweight/obese children. Obesity-related studies involving pediatric patients are crucial to developing appropriate methods for preventing the development of further complications in adulthood.