To Understand Childhood Obesity, Researchers Look to Inactive, Fat Rats

A waste. Look to the parents.

Childhood obesity has nearly tripled in the past three decades, and by 2009, 17 percent of those 2-19 years of age were classified as obese. If actions against childhood obesity do not take place it is likely that today's children could be the first generation in over a century to experience a decline in life expectancy due to the epidemic of childhood obesity which leads to complications in later life. While little is known about how inactivity and obesity lead to undesirable side effects such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers, scientists at the University of Missouri in Columbia have reviewed dozens of studies that look at childhood obesity using new animal models. The scientists suggest that the models could be key to better understanding the condition and its complex relationship to certain diseases.

The article appears in the online edition of the American Journal of Physiology -- Regulatory, Integrative, and Comparative Physiology, published by the American Physiological Society.

The real rats in this case.