Interventions for treating obesity in children

Abstract

Childhood obesity remains an important public health concern and prevention programmes should be the priority in order to decrease the prevalence of obesity. The aim of this review is to summarize the most effective types of intervention for treating obesity in children and adolescents. A number of identified strategies used to treat childhood obesity range from lifestyle approaches, pharmacotherapy to surgical intervention. Dietary treatment of obese children and adolescents should aim to ensure adequate growth and development by reducing excessive fat mass accumulation, avoiding loss of lean body mass, improving well-being and self-esteem, and preventing cyclical weight regain. Management protocols involve behaviour modifications, family support, and lifestyle changes which are difficult to put into practice and may require multidisciplinary professional teams. The cornerstone of weight loss programmes is to achieve a negative energy balance. There is evidence that dietary interventions are more effective in achieving weight loss when combined with other strategies, such as increasing physical activity levels and/or psychological interventions to promote behavioural changes. Psychological interventions have been employed in an effort to achieve long-term maintenance of behavioural change. Childhood obesity treatments should involve a combination of lifestyle changes including strategies to reduce energy intake, increase physical activity, reduce sedentary activities, facilitate family involvement and change behaviours associated with eating and physical activity. However, drug therapy in obese children must not be used as isolated treatment but as complementary to the traditional treatments of diet, physical activity and lifestyle changes. Besides, surgical procedures have been used to treat severe morbid obesity in children and adolescents when more conservative treatments have proven to be inadequate.