Adolescent and Childhood Obesity and Excess Morbidity and Mortality in Young Adulthood—a Systematic Review
Abstract
Purpose of review Rates of childhood obesity have been soaring in recent decades. The association between obesity in adulthood and excess morbidity and mortality has been readily established, whereas the association of childhood and adolescent obesity has not. The purpose of this review is to summarize existing data regarding the association of the presence of obesity in childhood/adolescence and early-onset adverse outcomes in adulthood, with specific focus on young adults under the age of 45 years. Recent findings Diabetes, cancer, and cardiometabolic outcomes in midlife are closely linked to childhood and adolescent obesity. Childhood and adolescent obesity confer major risks of excess and premature morbidity and mortality, which may be evident before age 30 years in both sexes. The scientific literature is mixed regarding the independent risk of illness, which may be attributed to childhood BMI regardless of adult BMI, and additional data is required to establish causality between the two. Nonetheless, the increasing prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity may impose an increase of disease burden in midlife, emphasizing the need for effective interventions to be implemented at a young age.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The higher the childhood BMI, the higher the risk of developing obesity-related non-communicable diseases in adulthood.
“The higher the childhood BMI,148 the higher the risk of developing obesity-related non-communicable diseases in adulthood.149,150”
From Definition and diagnostic criteria of clinical obesity (2025) · cites this paper as [150]
Cites
Ror2 signaling regulates Golgi structure and transport through IFT20 for tumor invasiveness
Nishita, M., Park, S.-Y., Nishio, T., Kamizaki, K., Wang, Z., Tamada, K., Takumi, T., Hashimoto, R., Otani, H., Pazour, G. J., et al. (2017) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-016-0028-x · Cited by 15,947 · see citing works
Bunney, P. E., Zink, A. N., Holm, A. A., Billington, C. J., & Kotz, C. M. (2017) · Physiology & Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.03.040 · Cited by 2,104 · see citing works
Childhood Body-Mass Index and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Adulthood
Baker, J. L., Olsen, L. W., & Sørensen, T. I. A. (2007) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa072515 · Cited by 1,679 · see citing works
Type 2 diabetes in adolescents and young adults
Lascar, N., Brown, J., Pattison, H., Barnett, A. H., Bailey, C. J., & Bellary, S. (2018) · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · doi:10.1016/s2213-8587(17)30186-9 · Cited by 824 · see citing works
Normal fasting plasma glucose levels and type 2 diabetes in young men
Tirosh, A., Shai, I., Tekes-Manova, D., Israeli, E., Pereg, D., Shochat, T., Kochba, I., & Rudich, A. (2005) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa050080 · Cited by 508 · see citing works
Long-Term Complications and Mortality in Young-Onset Diabetes
Constantino, M. I., Molyneaux, L., Limacher-Gisler, F., Al-Saeed, A., Luo, C., Wu, T., Twigg, S. M., Yue, D. K., & Wong, J. (2013) · Diabetes Care · doi:10.2337/dc12-2455 · Cited by 423 · see citing works
Change in Overweight from Childhood to Early Adulthood and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Bjerregaard, L. G., Jensen, B. W., Ängquist, L., Osler, M., Sørensen, T. I. A., & Baker, J. L. (2018) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa1713231 · Cited by 392 · see citing works
Characteristics of an Adult Population With Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes
Hillier, T. A., & Pedula, K. L. (2001) · Diabetes Care · doi:10.2337/diacare.24.9.1522 · Cited by 284 · see citing works
Würtz, P., Wang, Q., Kangas, A. J., Richmond, R. C., Skarp, J., Tiainen, M., Tynkkynen, T., Soininen, P., Havulinna, A. S., Kaakinen, M., et al. (2014) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001765 · Cited by 280 · see citing works
Gungor, N., Bacha, F., Saad, R., Janosky, J., & Arslanian, S. (2005) · Diabetes Care · doi:10.2337/diacare.28.3.638 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Bacha, F., Gungor, N., Lee, S., & Arslanian, S. A. (2013) · Pediatric Diabetes · doi:10.1111/j.1399-5448.2012.00915.x · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Rademacher, E. R., Jacobs, D. R., Moran, A., Steinberger, J., Prineas, R. J., & Sinaiko, A. (2009) · Journal of Hypertension · doi:10.1097/hjh.0b013e32832e8cfa · Cited by 101 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Definition and diagnostic criteria of clinical obesity
Rubino, F., Cummings, D. E., Eckel, R. H., Cohen, R. V., Wilding, J. P. H., Brown, W. A., Stanford, F. C., Batterham, R. L., Farooqi, I. S., Farpour-Lambert, N. J., et al. (2025) · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · doi:10.1016/s2213-8587(24)00316-4 · Cited by 1,811 · see citing works
- Authors
- Horesh, A., Tsur, A. M., Bardugo, A., & Twig, G.
- Affiliations
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Twig, Gilad
- Venue
- Current Obesity Reports
- Published
- 2021-05-05
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 301-310
- ISSN
- 2162-4968 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3158939043
- Cited by
- 242
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 35 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 70 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 6.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Current Obesity Reports (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer Risks and Factors
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Birth, Development, and Health
- Keywords
- childhood obesity, adolescent obesity, early adulthood, premature mortality, type 2 diabetes, cancer risk, cardiometabolic outcomes, body mass index, disease burden, early-onset disease
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Child, Diabetes Mellitus, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Morbidity, Risk Factors, Body Mass Index, Prevalence, Young Adult, Pediatric Obesity
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
