title: Obesity leads to declines in motor skills across childhood.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Poor motor skills have been consistently linked with a higher body weight in childhood, but the causal direction of this association is not fully understood. This study investigated the temporal ordering between children's motor skills and weight status at 5 and 10 years.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 668 children (54% male) who were studied from infancy as part of an iron deficiency anaemia preventive trial and follow-up study in Santiago, Chile. All were healthy, full-term and weighing 3 kg or more at birth. Cross-lagged panel modelling was conducted to understand the temporal precedence between children's weight status and motor proficiency. Analyses also examined differences in gross and fine motor skills among healthy weight, overweight, and obese children.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A higher BMI at 5 years contributed to declines in motor proficiency from 5 to 10 years. There was no support for the reverse, that is, poor motor skills at 5 years did not predict increases in relative weight from 5 to 10 years. Obesity at 5 years also predicted declines in motor proficiency. When compared with normal weight children, obese children had significantly poorer total and gross motor skills at both 5 and 10 years. Overweight children had poorer total and gross motor skills at 10 years only. The differences in total and gross motor skills among normal weight, overweight and obese children appear to increase with age. There were small differences in fine motor skill between obese and non-obese children at 5 years only.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Obesity preceded declines in motor skills and not the reverse. Study findings suggest that early childhood obesity intervention efforts might help prevent declines in motor proficiency that, in turn, may positively impact children's physical activity and overall fitness levels.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, Department of Pediatrics, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, Department of Pediatrics, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: East
authors.affiliation: University of Chile, Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Blanco
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, Department of Pediatrics, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: E Kang
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Sim
authors.affiliation: University of Chile, Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Castillo
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan, Center for Human Growth and Development, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lozoff
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, Department of Pediatrics, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gahagan
mesh_terms: D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002677:Chile / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D015995:Prevalence; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: body mass index; motor skills; obesity; overweight status