RESEARCH ARTI CLE M ETABOLI C RI SK FACT ORS AMONG 9-12 YEAR OLD CHI LDREN OF COCHI N Rashmi H. Poojara* and Hasna, K Depar t ment of Home Sci ence, St . Ter esas Col l ege, Er nakul am, Ker al a ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Objectives: To assess the nutritional status of school going children on the basis of anthropometric, biochemical and dietary variables, To estimate the incidence of overweight and obesity, To study the metabolic risk factors in the subjects by weight status. Methods: Sixty three nine to twelve year old children were purposively selected from two urban schools in Ernakulam district, Kerala and based on BMI percentiles the subjects were broadly classified into non overweight and overweight respectively. The subjects were assessed for the risk of the metabolic components proposed by American Dietetic Association (ADA, 2004) and categorized in to normal and high risk respectively. Results: The result of the study reveal that majority of the overweight subjects had increased levels of all investigated risk factors compared to non overweight subjects. Serum insulin and systolic blood pressure show a highly significant correlation (p<0.001) with weight status. The overall metabolic risk of subjects by weight status shows that 66.7 percent of the overweight children had clustering of one or two risk factors of metabolic syndrome when compared to 46.3 percent of non overweight subjects. Conclusions: The frequency of clustering of metabolic risk factors is higher among the overweight subjects compared to their non overweight counterparts. © Copy Right, IJCR, 2011, Academic Journals. All rights reserved INTRODUCTION The rapid economic development along with an increased urbanization and impact of market globalization over the last decades has brought about considerable changes in diet and lifestyle of the people all around the world. Changes in the world food economy are reflected in shifting dietary patterns like increased consumption of energy dense diets high in fat- particularly saturated fat- and low in unrefined carbohydrates. These patterns are combined with a decline in energy expenditure that is associated with sedentary lifestyle (WHO/FAO, 2003). It is believed that these changes in dietary and lifestyle patterns are the major factors for increasing the prevalence of obesity associated with non communicable chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke (Khongsdier, 2005). The metabolic syndrome has been defined as cluster of most dangerous risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes which included abdominal obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and raised fasting plasma glucose (Alberti et al., 2005). Already, a quarter of the world’s adult population has metabolic syndrome and this condition is appearing with increasing frequency in children and adolescents due to the growing obesity epidemic within this young population *Corresponding author: rashmipoojara@rediffmail.com (Weiss et al., 2004). As a major risk factor for chronic disease, the metabolic syndrome is rapidly increasing in prevalence with raising childhood obesity and sedentary lifestyle. In western countries, the incidence of childhood obesity has more than doubled over the past generation, as a consequence, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes mellitus is rapidly increasing in pediatric population (Cook et al., 2003). Children with metabolic syndrome are two to three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke and five times as likely to develop type 2 diabetes in their later life compared with children without the syndrome. The risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome in children can be extended to adulthood and causes many cardiometabolic complications. So early identification of children at risk of metabolic syndrome will be crucial to the prevention of chronic disease during childhood and in later life (Zimmett, 2007). MATERIALS AND METHODS The study was conducted in two private schools of Ernakulam, namely Bhavans Vidya Mandir and Amrita Vidyalayam. From the two schools with parental consent, 63 healthy children (39 boys and 24 girls) between the ages of nine to twelve years were recruited for the study. The two urban schools were selected by convenience sampling; the sub sampling was done by voluntary presentation for a blood draw in the prescribed age group after dissemination of the study I SSN: 0975 -833X Available online at http://www.journalcra.com International Journal of Current Research Vol. 3, Issue, 6, pp.408-410, June, 2011 I NT ERNATI ONAL JOURNAL OF CURRENT RESEARCH Article History: Received 13 th April, 2011 Received in revised form 9 th May, 2011 Accepted 1 st June, 2011 Published online 26 nd June 2011 Key words: Overweight, Metabolic syndrome, Serum Insulin Systolic blood pressure. SPECI AL I SSUE