Carotid intima media-thickness is increased in obese children metabolically healthy, metabolically unhealthy, and with metabolic syndrome, compared to the non-obese controls

The prevalence of obesity continues to increase. Obesity is associated with cardiovascular risk factors: Elevated blood pressure, dyslipidemia and glycemic alterations, causing metabolic syndrome. A subgroup of obese, Metabolically Healthy Obese (MHO), appears to be less prone to the development of metabolic disturbances. Carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) is a non-invasive marker of subclinical atherosclerosis and it is associated with increased risk of CVD events. To investigate the cardiovascular risk, demonstrated through the increase of cIMT in obese subjects without Metabolic Syndrome (MetS), we have studied cIMT in MHO, metabolically unhealthy obese (MUO) and obese with MetS diagnosed with the IDEFICS criteria and compared to a control group. 224 obese children aged 6 to 21 years (13.50 ±4.01 years) and 103 normal weight subjects aged 7 to 19 years (13.2±4.1 years) were studied. The body mass index (BMI) of the obese children was ≥ the 95th percentile. Based on the IDEFICS criteria, we divided the obese subjects in three groups: MHO if no criteria were out of range, MUO if, at least, one of the criteria was out of range and MetS group if all the IDEFICS criteria were present. In all the subjects cIMT was measured with color Doppler by a vascular surgeon. Differences in the means of the variables were tested by ANOVA. Based on the IDEFICS criteria, 32 subjects were affected by MetS (14.3%), 66 were considered MUO (29.4%) and 126 MHO (56.3%). Comparison of mean cIMT highlighted a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the groups of obese children (MHO, MUO and MetS) and controls for both carotid arteries. We did not find significative difference in the value of cIMT in MHO, MUO and MetS subjects, and all groups showed cIMT value higher compared to cIMT of the controls.