Overweight girls ‘see a doctor more often for musculoskeletal complaints’
Research shows that girls between the ages of four and eleven who are overweight or obese visit a doctor more often about musculoskeletal problems than their peers with a healthy weight.
Reception year students with a body mass index considered overweight were 24% more likely to see a doctor at least once for a musculoskeletal problem, while their peers living with obesity were 67% more likely to do so. than girls with a healthy weight, the study showed.
And girls in the sixth year who were obese were 20% more likely to visit a GP for musculoskeletal problems, while boys with a BMI considered underweight were 61% less likely to do so than children with a BMI healthy weight.
Knee and back problems or diagnoses were recorded most often, according to the findings, which focused on one part of London and were published online in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Nicola Firman, health data scientist at Queen Mary University of London and lead author of the study, said: “There have been only a few longitudinal studies that have examined the association between obesity and musculoskeletal health outcomes during childhood.
“We previously conducted a systematic review, which found that the evidence is limited and generally of fair or moderate quality.
“We investigate the musculoskeletal health outcomes of children living with obesity in primary school in an ethnically diverse population in Great Britain, with high levels of childhood obesity and deprivation.”
Of the children in the reception year who had at least one musculoskeletal consultation, 46% of boys and 41.5% of girls reported knee pain. Among the sixth-year children, the corresponding proportions were 40.4% and 36%.
Among Reception Year children, 22% of boys and 32% of girls reported back pain, compared with 30% of Year 6 boys and 45% of Year 6 girls.
Obese girls from the reception year visited their doctor more often about a musculoskeletal problem than their healthy-weight peers, but there was no difference between the boys.
Firman added: “There has been research in Spain and the US showing that back pain is more common in girls, but not in boys. But overall, there isn’t much longitudinal evidence examining the link between obesity (and) musculoskeletal health in childhood.”
The sample included primary school children from four ethnically diverse local authorities in North East London.
Commenting on the findings, Katharine Jenner, chief executive of the Obesity Health Alliance, said: “Primary-age children should be running around the playground, not sitting in pain in a doctor’s waiting room.
“The government has an obesity strategy that could change the trajectory for these children, but so far it has failed to implement most of it, and the target of halving childhood obesity by 2030 looks increasingly unachievable. ”