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FRIDAY, May 25, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Early-life weight status has an inverse association with some cognitive abilities in children, according to a study published online May 23 in Obesity<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Nan Li, Ph.D., from Brown University in Providence, R.I., and colleagues used data from mother-child pairs enrolled in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment Study (2003 to 2006) to assess children’s early-life weight status. The authors used neuropsychological tests to assess cognitive abilities at ages 5 and 8 years.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that of the 233 children, 167 were lean and 66 were non-lean. Full-scale intelligence quotient scores decreased for each 1-unit increase in weight-for-height standard deviation (SD) score, even after adjustment for covariables (\u03b2 = \u22121.4; 95 percent confidence interval, \u22123 to 0.1). Also, a 1-unit increase in weight-for-height SD score was associated with a decrease in perceptual reasoning (\u03b2 = \u22121.7; 95 percent confidence interval, \u22123.3 to 0) and working memory scores (\u03b2 = \u22122.4; 95 percent confidence interval, \u22124.4 to \u22120.4). Weight status generally had no correlation with other cognition measures.<\/p>\n
“Within this cohort of typically developing children, early-life weight status was inversely associated with children’s perceptual reasoning and working memory scores and possibly with full-scale intelligent quotient scores,” the authors write.<\/p>\n