Child-centred physical activity programme and parent-centred dietary programme alone or combined lead to sustainable reductions in BMI in 5–10-year-olds: diet alone or diet plus activity programmes seemed most effective
- Vestische Children's Hospital, University of Witten/Herdecke, Datteln, Germany
- Correspondence to Thomas Reinehr
Vestische Children's Hospital, University of Witten/Herdecke, Dr F Steiner Street 5, 45711 Datteln, Germany; t.reinehr{at}kinderklinik-datteln.de
The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity poses an ever-increasing problem for our health systems. Obese children tend to become obese adults. Childhood obesity is associated with cardiovascular risk factors (CRFs) and premature death in adulthood. The appropriate approach to reduce the obesity-related health risks is to reduce weight by lifestyle interventions based on physical activity, behaviour treatment and dietary counselling as recently recommended by a Cochrane review.1 However, the studies in this meta-analysis varied greatly in intervention design, outcome measurements and methodological quality, and therefore there is limited quality data to recommend one treatment programme to be favoured over another.
An example of an effective lifestyle intervention for obese children
Okely and colleagues compared a multicentre randomised controlled trial of a child-centred physical activity with a parent-centred dietary-modification programme in the HIKCUPS study. They hypothesised that a combined intervention (physical activity and diet) is more …
