O'Malley G.1,2, Blake C.1, Sheridan N.1, Murphy S.3
1Temple Street Children's University Hospital, Physiotherapy, Dublin, Ireland, 2University College Cork, Physiotherapy, Dublin, Ireland, 3University College Dublin, Paediatrics, Dublin, Ireland
Background: Children with obesity should receive timely treatment in order to prevent the progression of obesity into adulthood1. Lifestyle intervention is considered an effective first step to treating paediatric obesity2.
Purpose: To evaluate the clinical effect of the W82GO service on body mass index standardized deviation score (BMI SDS) at 12-months in children and adolescents. Secondly, we estimated the numbers needed to treat in order to achieve a clinically significant reduction in BMI SDS of 0.25.
Methods: Children and adolescents ( 16 years) with a BMI >98th centile were recruited from Temple Street Childrens University Hospital. Treatment was delivered as a group-based intervention (GT) or as individual outpatient treatment (IT). A group of age- and BMI-matched children on the clinic waiting list served as a control group. Changes in BMI SDS between the two groups were compared in ANCOVA analysis adjusted for baseline age, gender, BMI centile and time between measurements.
Results: 237 parent-child dyads commenced treatment (117 boys, 142 in GT) and attended for baseline assessment. In addition, there were 40 children in the waiting list control group (15 boys). Twelve-month data were available for 180 treated children (88 boys, 112 in group treatment), yielding dropout rates of 21% and 28% in GT and IT respectively. When adjusted for baseline covariates, the change in BMI SDS was -0.18 (95% CI -0.23, -0.13) while in the control group BMI SDS increased by 0.05 (95% CI -0.04, 0.14) (F=8.6, p 0.001). The mean difference of group treatment and individual treatment compared to control were -0.23 (95% CI -0.36, -0.11) and -0.23 (95% CI -0.37, -0.10) respectively. The number needed to treat for a 0.25 reduction in BMI SDS was 5 for group treatment and 6 for individual treatment.
Conclusion(s): Both GT and IT interventions are promising forms of obesity treatment. Further research is warranted to explore the effect of treatment on additional health outcomes via a randomized controlled trial.
Implications: Obesity treatment in childhood may reduce the progression of obesity and co-morbidities into adulthood.
Funding acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Health Service Executive, the Health Research Board and the Temple Street Foundation.
Topic: Paediatrics
Ethics approval: Ethical approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Temple Street Childrens University Hospital
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
