Abstract
Recently atherosclerosis in young people has been much discussed. Accordingly, we carried out a survey of degrees of obesity, serum lipid concentrations, uric acid (UA) concentration, and atherogenic index (AI) in primary school children (374 boys and 358 girls).
1) HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) and UA concentrations of the boys were higher than those of the girls, while AT and triglyceride (TG) concentration were higher in the girls. There was no significant difference in total cholesterol (TC) concentration between the sexes.
2) Serum HDL-C was age dependent.
The value for girls became higher for the first time after the 5th grade than the value for boys, which suggests that HDL-C is related to the activity of gonad.
3) The risk factors of atherosclerosis were greater for boys of more than 20% overweight than for boys of other weight groups, while girls of more than 20% overweight did not have risk factors significantly different from those of the other girls.
4) Although there is a relationship between the degree of obesity and serum TG values in adults, there was no such relationships observed in the girls in this study. There was no relationship between UA and TG in both sexes. Therefore, we suggest that there may be differences in lipid and UA metabolism between adults and children.
5) We feel it is necessary to take a measure to prevent the degree of obesity in children (particularly in boys) which exeed the 20% overweight level.
