Is obesity associated with injuries among young people?

Abstract

Our analysis shows that childhood obesity and physical activity increase the occurrence of injuries. However, we did not observe an association between obesity and severe injuries. Obesity as a risk factor for the occurrence of injuries has to be confirmed by other studies, and the understanding of the mechanism for the observed association needs more investigation.

Childhood Obesity Is Associated With Increased Risk of Most Lower Extremity Fractures

“…The association between increasing BMI and increasing risk of fractures of the foot, ankle, leg, and knee is most pronounced in the 6-to 11-year-old age group and least important in the adolescent 12-to 19-year-old patients. Like many other large- scale fracture studies, the increased fracture risk with increasing age in childhood along with the increased fracture risk in boys as compared with girls was clearly illuminated, especially in the oldest age group [2,5,9,21,22]. In addition, this is one of the first studies to provide an in-depth assessment of the association between childhood weight and lower extremity fracture risk by region and age group in an extremely large, stable population.…”

“…Our cross-section of patients in southern California had an even higher prevalence of obesity of 19.2%. Bazelmans et al [2] showed in a cross-sectional study that childhood obesity increases the occurrence of injuries in general, and multiple authors have noted the increased risk of lower extremity injuries in obese patients [2, 3, 14, 26, 27, 30-32, 39, 41]. In regard to fracture risk, Chan and Chen [3] stated obese patients have an increased fracture risk and both Haricharan et al [14] and Pollack et al [30] demonstrated an increased lower extremity fracture risk in obese patients in motor vehicle collisions.…”

“…By virtue of having access to an extremely large, self-contained electronic database that is truly a crosssection of our southern California population, we were able to provide stable population-based estimates of the associations between childhood obesity and lower extremity fractures that have not previously been demonstrated in such a way. In addition, rather than purely comparing obese (C 95 th percentile) with nonobese patients or assess the association between obesity and all musculoskeletal complaints, like with all previously referenced studies [2,3,14,26,27,[30][31][32]39, 41], we measured more specific weight classes and assessed only lower extremity fractures to understand how varying degrees of increasing (or decreasing) weight affect fracture risk in the lower extremities. Also, we further assessed fracture risk by both age and lower extremity region as opposed to that of all prior studies on the association of childhood or adult obesity and fracture/injury risk (Table 5).…”

“…Ogden et al [28,29] have documented the increasing number of overweight children in the United States. In addition to putting children at risk for long-term medical issues such as diabetes and hypertension, numerous studies [2,3,14,26,27,30,40] have documented the association between obesity and an increased risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Most of these studies, however, are not populationbased estimates based on the degree of obesity.…”

Association between obesity and injury among Taiwanese adults

“…[3][4][5] Some studies have identified an increased risk of injury among young overweight and obese groups of people. 6,7 Other research, from cross-sectional studies, has shown that increased body weight is associated with an increased risk of unintentional injury 8,9 and with workplace traumatic injury. 10,11 Past studies that have investigated the relationship between obesity and injury have been limited to mostly western populations, by the use of a specific subgroup of persons, or by the use of a cross-sectional study approach.…”