Age- and weight group-specific weight gain patterns in children and adolescents during the 15 years before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: International Journal of Obesity Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 144 - 152
• Main Authors: Vogel, Mandy, Geserick, Mandy, Gausche, Ruth, Beger, Christoph, Poulain, Tanja, Meigen, Christof, Körner, Antje, Keller, Eberhard, Kiess, Wieland, Pfäffle, Roland
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.01.2022; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/499; 692/699/1702/393; Adolescent; Body Mass Index; Child; Child, Preschool; Children; Children & youth; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - prevention & control; Disease control; Epidemiology; Female; Germany - epidemiology; Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Humans; Infant; Internal Medicine; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolic Diseases; Obesity; Pandemics; Pediatric Obesity - epidemiology; Public Health; Quarantine; Registries; Risk Factors; Subgroups; Teenagers; Trends; Weight Gain; Weight gain measurement; Germany
• ISSN: 0307-0565; 1476-5497; 1476-5497
• DOI: 10.1038/s41366-021-00968-2

Background/Objectives There is a concern that measures aiming to limit a further spread of COVID-19, e.g., school closures and social distancing, cause an aggravation of the childhood obesity epidemic. Therefore, we compared BMI trends during the 15 years before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subjects/Methods To assess the change in weight dynamics during the first months of COVID-19, we compared the trends of 3-month change in BMI-SDS (ΔBMI-SDS) and the proportions of children showing a high positive (HPC) or high negative (HNC) weight change between 2005 and 2019 and the respective changes from 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 2020 (after the onset of anti-pandemic measures) in more than 150,000 children (9689 during the pandemic period). The period of 3 months corresponds approximately to the first lockdown period in Germany. Results During the COVID-19 pandemic, we found a substantial weight gain across all weight and age groups, reflected by an increase in the 3-month change in BMI-SDS ( β  = 0.05, p  < 0.001), an increase in the proportion of children showing HPC (OR = 1.4, p  < 0.001), and a decrease in the proportion of children showing HNC (OR = 0.7, p  < 0.001). Besides, we found the same trends since 2005 on a low but stable level with a yearly increase of ΔBMI-SDS by β  = 0.001 ( p  < 0.001), the odds of HPC increased by OR high_pos  = 1.01 ( p  < 0.001), and the odds of HNC decreased by OR high_neg  = 0.99 ( p  < 0.001). These rather small effects accumulated to β  = 0.02, OR high_pos  = 1.14, and OR high_pos  = 0.85 over the whole period 2005–2019. Alarmingly, both the long-term and the short-term effects were most pronounced in the obese subgroup. Conclusions There are positive dynamics in different measures of weight change, indicating a positive trend in weight gain patterns, especially within the group of children with obesity. These dynamics are likely to be escalated by COVID-19-related measures. Thus, they may lead to a significant further aggravation of the childhood obesity pandemic.