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With children and adolescents becoming increasingly obese, determining critical time of weight accrual offers the opportunity to better determine interventions.
To that end, German investigators conducted a population-based, longitudinal study in which 51,505 children were evaluated during the first year of life, then annually until age 14 years, and again between ages 15 and 18.
The study identified the following:
Normal-weight adolescents generally had normal body-mass index (BMI) throughout childhood.
Most obese adolescents had normal BMI as infants, but 22% became overweight and 33% became obese by the age of 5.
The greatest annual increases in BMI among overweight and obese adolescents occurred between the ages of 2 and 6 years and continue…