0:00:09a child obesity is more than doubled over the past thirty years
0:00:13resulting in both immediate and long term effects on health and will be
0:00:18diet and exercise play a critical role in this epidemic but what's root causes
0:00:22with two twenty million dollars and funding for the national institutes of health jodie can
0:00:27a band a professor of psychology is conducting extensive research on the interplay of genetics
0:00:31and the environment to better understand the other language factors in implications for treatment and
0:00:36disease prevention
0:00:38welcome back again of n
0:00:41in studying obesity childhood obesity your work has focused on adopted children
0:00:46you look at both birth an adoptive parents one
0:00:51well we use an adoption design to tease apart the relative influences of genetic factors
0:00:57prenatal factors
0:00:58and environmental factors on the development of obesity or being overweight across childhood
0:01:05and we're using this design because as you know adopted children shared environment with their
0:01:10adoptive families but they don't share genes
0:01:12on the other hand adopted children share genes with their biological parents
0:01:17the where their birth parents
0:01:19but they do not share a common environment
0:01:21so in this type a design if we find that the adopted child's weight more
0:01:26closely resembles their adoptive parents then we can conclude that there is something about the
0:01:31environment that they share
0:01:33that influences the weights of the parents in the children on the other hand if
0:01:37we find that the adopted children's weights closely resemble their biological parents then we can
0:01:42conclude that genetic factors may be operative
0:01:46another important feature of the adoption design is that we can also tease apart prenatal
0:01:51environmental influences from posting all environmental influences
0:01:54and again this is because the biological mother creates the prenatal environment for the child
0:02:00but in contrast the adoptive parents control the child's posting we find that
0:02:05so that enables us to really tease apart the effects of different types of environments
0:02:10upon the child's pros and waking or weight loss over time so
0:02:15the real purpose of our study
0:02:17is to look at how these factors
0:02:21work together
0:02:22to launch children on away trajectory that's gonna lead to obesity
0:02:28or also maintain children on this trajectory
0:02:31so that's really what we're trying to do in this type of this type of
0:02:35work
0:02:36so how are you a sensing and measuring data to determine obesity risks and children
0:02:41well my study is actually an extension of an ongoing perspective adoption study that was
0:02:45started in two thousand and two
0:02:48by researchers here at u w as well as penn state and the university borg
0:02:53on yale university and university pittsburgh
0:02:56in this larger study includes five hundred and sixty one children who were adopted within
0:03:01the first your voice
0:03:03actually within first month if i should say
0:03:05and we've been following up these children
0:03:09since they were about six months of age so this has been a long term
0:03:12study
0:03:13and we've been following the children in their families their adoptive families and biological families
0:03:19through in home visits
0:03:21through web based questionnaires through telephone interviews
0:03:25in my study were also using medical records
0:03:28to assess and the children screen all risks
0:03:32as well as the growth patterns
0:03:34well this is fascinating so what to your preliminary findings indicate
0:03:38is childhood obesity predicted by mix of genetics and environment well before babies board
0:03:43well what we're finding and these are preliminary data because we're only halfway through data
0:03:48collection for the broader project about what we're finding so far is that genetic prenatal
0:03:54as well as close channel factors all influence the child's weight trajectories over time
0:04:00however the pictures more complicated
0:04:03then just saying genes environment are important what we're finding so far is that genes
0:04:11and cranial posed a one fundamental factors influence of children's weight trajectories at different points
0:04:16in time
0:04:17in particular base and some preliminary analyses with about two hundred children the sample
0:04:22we have found that
0:04:25genetic risk
0:04:27seems to increase over time
0:04:29so
0:04:31genetic risk seems to influence the child's weight waking between you just two and five
0:04:37but the effect becomes stronger after each five
0:04:41in contrast what we're finding is that some prenatal factors have an influence upon children's
0:04:46we came over time but these affect start to wait after each five
0:04:52and then another factor that we've looked at so far sis phenomena called
0:04:57really accelerated growth with a small number of children are sample who were born underweight
0:05:04but then they rapidly put on weight between bertha nine months of age so they
0:05:08might start at the three th percentile for weight but then jump up to the
0:05:11sixty eight percent percentile for way so they show catch of growth or accelerated growth
0:05:16doesn't sound with that would be a bad thing but it turns that when shorter
0:05:19put on weight that fast within such a short period of time they're putting on
0:05:23fat nasa not we now
0:05:25and this is seems to be a respective for later obesity
0:05:29and what we're finding however is the that again is true we look at the
0:05:32jewels weight trajectories between ages two and five but after that
0:05:36the informants things to decrease
0:05:38so this is only put this altogether so
0:05:42and based on these preliminary studies a look like it looks like prenatal factors and
0:05:46maybe very early post channel factors main watch a child
0:05:51on a weight
0:05:52trajectory that will lead to being overweight or obese but it may be jeans the
0:05:57takeover and maintain children on the trajectory
0:06:00it's interesting so i have to ask the million dollar question
0:06:04what can we do in the way of intervention and treatment
0:06:07one popular to three million dollar question
0:06:11what can we do it well again most my findings are probably aware preliminary based
0:06:16upon a small subset of children and we haven't had the chance you have to
0:06:20collect information about the children's diets and do complete the more comprehensive assessments
0:06:25of the children's genetic risk an impersonal environments
0:06:29so that's to come
0:06:30but we hope to do
0:06:32is to use the information that we do obtain to identify children who showed different
0:06:38patterns of growth over time it's likely it'll be you know substantial group number of
0:06:43children who
0:06:44show healthy weight
0:06:46between two and ten years of age
0:06:49and they're fine but we're also anticipating or begin to see this that there are
0:06:53a number of children who show rapid increases in their weight in their heading towards
0:06:59obesity and we also see some children who start on this trajectory between the ages
0:07:04of two and for some children who were starting at age six
0:07:07so our hope is to look at those children identify the children during each of
0:07:12these different trajectories in get a better understanding of the degree to which genes the
0:07:17prenatal environment with post new environment
0:07:20set children on those trajectories in the degree to which these factors thing to children
0:07:25on these trajectories
0:07:26and so the idea here in the one thing that a very interested in also
0:07:31is looking at how children suppose table environments can exacerbate
0:07:38or dampen the expression of genetic prenatal risks on these trajectories
0:07:43so that's
0:07:45my preliminary answer to the million dollar hush
0:07:49well thank you so much older
0:07:52this about a very interesting discussion on a topic that is at the forefront of
0:07:56our nation's health concerns i wanna thank doctor again a ban for sharing with us
0:08:00insights today
0:08:01a very low dimension