Obese children are more likely to develop common immune-related skin diseases than children of normal weight, a new study has found. The findings come from a study of more than two million children that investigated weight changes and their relationship to common immune-related skin diseases, such as eczema and psoriasis.
childhood obesity
Childhood obesity has skyrocketed in recent years, becoming an undeniable public health crisis, exacerbated by the impacts of the pandemic and national lockdowns. The precise mechanisms responsible for the association of obesity with the development of chronic inflammatory skin diseases, including psoriasis, eczema and skin cancer, remain uncertain.
New research suggests that childhood obesity may contribute to the development of common immune-related skin diseases such as alopecia areata, eczema and psoriasis, and maintaining a healthy weight may help reduce the chances of developing these skin conditions.
Immune-related skin diseases negatively impact the quality of life, including the emotional, physical, social, and functional health of children and their families. Although several biologics have been shown to be effective in treating children with eczema or psoriasis, the lack of treatment options and paediatric trials of systemic therapy remain significant challenges in the treatment of children with these diseases.
“Our research team is very interested in the communication between the skin and the gut, and we believe that various factors, including diet, obesity, or other lifestyle factors, can affect the gut environment and contribute to the development of immune-related skin diseases,” explains study co-author Dr. Hyunsoon Park, from the Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, and the Laboratory of Intestinal Mucosal and Skin Immunity, Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Bora Mai Medical Center, according to EurekAlert. “We are trying to find the missing pieces to clarify how they are connected, and our current research is a step toward that understanding. We conducted a large-scale study using data from a national database in Korea, which includes information on almost all children in the country. Our goal was to find out how a child’s weight and changes in weight are related to the development of alopecia areata, eczema, and psoriasis.”
the study
The new study, published in the journal Investigative Dermatology in August, detailed the results of an analysis of 2,161,900 Korean children from 2009 to 2020, investigating the relationship between obesity or dynamic changes in weight and the development of immune-related skin diseases.
The study found that obese children were more likely to develop common immune-related skin diseases, compared to children of normal weight.
Of the three most common conditions, eczema showed the most pronounced trend: children who gained weight (from normal to overweight) were more likely to have eczema than children who maintained their normal weight, and children who lost weight (from overweight to normal) were less likely to have eczema than children who maintained their overweight.
“Previously, many studies have examined the relationship between childhood obesity and immune-related skin diseases,” explains study co-author Dr. Sung-Ri Kim, from the Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea. “However, most of these studies only focused on data from a single time point or compared groups with and without the condition (i.e., obesity or overweight), and sample sizes were small. Very few studies have followed children for long periods of time to study how their weight affects the development of these skin diseases. This means that we still don’t know for sure whether obesity or overweight causes eczema and psoriasis or the other way around. No studies to date have looked at the effect of weight on alopecia areata or how dynamic changes in a child’s weight affect the development of common immune-related skin diseases.”