title: Pediatric obesity. An introduction.
abstract: The prevalence of child and adolescent obesity in the United States increased dramatically between 1970 and 2000, and there are few indications that the rates of childhood obesity are decreasing. Obesity is associated with myriad medical, psychological, and neurocognitive abnormalities that impact children's health and quality of life. Genotypic variation is important in determining the susceptibility of individual children to undue gains in adiposity; however, the rapid increase in pediatric obesity prevalence suggests that changes to children's environments and/or to their learned behaviors may dramatically affect body weight regulation. This paper presents an overview of the epidemiology, consequences, and etiopathogenesis of pediatric obesity, serving as a general introduction to the subsequent papers in this Special Issue that address aspects of childhood obesity and cognition in detail.
authors.affiliation: Section on Growth and Obesity, Program in Developmental Endocrinology and Genetics, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. Electronic address: jy15i@nih.gov.
authors.forename: Jack A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Yanovski
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001835:Body Weight; D002648:Child; D015897:Comorbidity; D006801:Humans; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology
keywords: Adolescents; Children; Etiology; Hyperphagia; Overeating
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