Obese children have a higher risk of developing eczema, a new study at St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, USA, has found. Dr Jonathan Silverberg, a dermatologist, and colleagues used information from medical records of over 400 children with eczema and about 800 without eczema. They found that obesity was twice as common in the children and adolescents with eczema. The researchers also showed that eczema was more common in the children who became obese at a younger age: for every 10 children who were obese between the ages of 2 and 5, about six went on the develop eczema, and in comparison, for every 10 children who became obese some time after their fifth birthday, only three developed eczema.
When eczema covers the whole body, treatment is usually with steroids that can interfere with children's growth or affect bone deveoplment. Scratching can lead to infection that is commonly treatment by multiple courses of antibiotics, leading to vulnerability by sugerbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). MRSA is antibiotic resistant, and lives on the skin, and severe infections can become life-threatening.
Silverberg says that as there is no cure for eczema, making sure children do not become obese is a useful preventative measure. However the study does not show that obesity causes eczema, merely that there is a common cause, which could be inflammation. Giamila Fantuzzi, associate professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois, Chicago, says when people become obese, their fat tissue becomes larger and leads to the development of inflammation in fat tissue. Weight loss would reduce the inflammation, and therefore reduce the instance of eczema, as well as other obesity-related problems like diabetes and heart disease.
Source: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
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