2024-09-13 18:00:04
Research suggests that there may be a correlation between having a high body mass index (BMI) during childhood and developing schizophrenia in adulthood.
Posted in ‘Science Advances‘, the study also indicated that having a higher BMI in adulthood may be associated with a lower risk of schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
A high BMI has been linked to a high probability of developing many physical and mental health problems. Most scientists know that this correlation does not occur in isolation, because there are many economic factors that influence the economy.
Despite this, studies often focus on the effects of high BMI in adulthood, leaving the link between high BMI in childhood and mental health in adulthood largely unexplored, especially with regard to psychiatric disorders. serious as schizophrenia.
Researchers at the Wuhan Fourth Hospital and Beijing Children’s Hospital, China, used participants and genetic data from the Psychiatric Genomics Standardization Group and FinnGen to conduct simulations of randomized controlled trials to identify important links between variables. Specifically, they investigated possible relationships between childhood BMI and schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, major depression, OCD, and Alzheimer’s neurodegenerative disease.
The results showed that a higher BMI in childhood was associated with a higher risk of developing schizophrenia in adulthood.
But surprisingly, a high BMI in adulthood is associated with a lower risk of both schizophrenia and OCD.
“The exact mechanism underlying the relationship between childhood BMI and schizophrenia remains unclear,” the authors wrote, suggesting that obesity-driven changes in brain structure may occur during a critical phase of neurodevelopment.
“Our study provides strong evidence for policy makers and health professionals to develop interventions aimed at reducing childhood obesity and reducing its long-term consequences on mental health,” they concluded.
However, warns Mario Gutiérrez-Bedmar, professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Malaga“It should be noted that this is a randomized study mendelian and, therefore, the exposure variables that are of interest in this work, the body mass index (BMI) both in childhood and in adulthood, are not measured directly, but through the so-called material variables, which in this case will be the variables “Genesis in relation to both BMIs.”
In the sentences to Science Media Centerensure that «translating the results of this study into practice reveals two that must be taken into account. On the one hand, the fact that a higher BMI in childhood is related to a greater risk of schizophrenia in adulthood reinforces the already strong scientific evidence on the benefits of controlling BMI in childhood. However, the fact that a higher BMI in the elderly is related to a lower risk of schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder would have no clinical applicationsince said increase in BMI will mean a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, among other pathologies.
Knowledge
“Great caution in the face of something that, on the other hand, does not say anything that our ancients did not already know: mens sana in corpore sana,” says Erik Cobo, mathematician and doctor at the company. Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
In his opinion, this research should be considered a simple idea that is introduced to the community, not the result of scientific knowledge. -science -science -science -science – Science can improve existing methods.
Now, he concluded, “Be very careful with this article, which requires a very deep study».
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