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Use of Serial Weight and Length Measurements in Children from Birth to Two Years of Age to Predict Obesity at Five Years of Age

Childhood obesity is a major health concern. The associated health risks dramatically reduce lifespan and increase healthcare costs. The goal was to develop methodology to identify as early in life as possible whether or not a child would become obese at age five. This diagnostic tool would facilitate clinical monitoring to prevent and or minimize obesity. Obesity is measured by Body Mass Index (BMI), but an improved metric, the ratio of weight to height (or length) (WOH), is proposed from this research for detecting early obesity. Results of this research demonstrate that WOH performs better than BMI for early detection of obesity in individuals using a longitudinal decision analysis (LDA), which is essentially an individuals type control chart analysis about a trend line. Utilizing LDA, the odds of obesity of a child at age five is indicated before the second birthday with 95% sensitivity and 97% specificity. Further, obesity at age five is indicated with 75% specificity before two months and with 84% specificity before three months of age. These results warrant expanding this study to larger cohorts of normal, overweight, and obese children at age five from different healthcare facilities to test the applicability of this novel diagnostic tool.