High Body Mass Index in Infancy May Predict Severe Obesity in Early Childhood

Objective To characterize growth trajectories of children who develop severe obesity by age 6 years and identify clinical thresholds for detection of high-risk children before the onset of obesity. Study design Two lean (body mass index [BMI] 5th to ≤75th percentile) and 2 severely obese (BMI ≥99th percentile) groups were selected from populations treated at pediatric referral and primary care clinics. A population-based cohort was used to validate the utility of identified risk thresholds. Repeated-measures mixed modeling and logistic regression were used for analysis. Results A total of 783 participants of normal weight and 480 participants with severe obesity were included in the initial study. BMI differed significantly between the severely obese and normal-weight cohorts by age 4 months ( P