Study: Gallstones On The Rise In Obese Teenagers
Gallstones, historically an adult problem, have been showing up in teenagers in an ever increasing rate, directly linked to obesity.
A new study, published in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, has found that obese children are up to eight times more likely than those of a healthy weight to be diagnosed with gallstones. The gallstones, which can be excruciatingly painful, are only adding to a growing trend of children presenting with conditions only seen before in adults.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente looked at the incidence of gallstones in over 500,000 California children from the ages of ten to nineteen; 766 of those children were diagnosed with gallstones. What they found is that the link is not only weight based, but gender based as well.
Extremely obese girls were eight times more likely than their healthy-weight female classmates to be diagnosed with gallstones were. Girls who were merely obese were six times as likely. Those who were just mildly overweight came in at three times the rate of healthy weight females.
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