A Life Course Approach to Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease

The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity, as well as the recognition of the role of early factors for the development of cardiovascular disease, called the attention to the impact of the dynamics of adiposity across pediatric age on adult health outcomes, highlighting the potential application of life course frameworks in this context. Therefore, there is increasing interest in identifying critical and sensitive periods for obesity development and to identify how to summarize lifetime exposure to adiposity/obesity to measure its impact on cardiovascular disease. The discussion of the application of the life course approach to the study of obesity determinants and its relation with cardiometabolic health is presented in this chapter. Additionally, different methods to summarize the cumulative exposure to adiposity are described as well as the challenges of measuring direct and indirect effects of childhood adiposity on adult cardiovascular disease.

Keywords: Adolescence, Cardiovascular disease, Childhood, Chronic disease, Critical periods, Duration, Growth trajectories, Life course, Lifetime risk, Obesity, Pediatric obesity, Sensitive periods.