ABSTRACT Objective This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of preclinical and clinical obesity among US youth using the Lancet Diabetes combined prevalence (20.8%) was similar to ~22% using BMI percentile alone. Clinical obesity was more common in older children and racial/ethnic minority groups but similar by sex. Impairments associated with clinical obesity included low HDL cholesterol (60.3%), asthma (24.8%), early menarche in girls (18.0%), elevated blood pressure (16.2%), prediabetes/diabetes (9.1%), and functional limitations related to walking (7.7%) and self‐care (4.1%). Conclusions Applying the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission's new definition criteria revealed substantial physiological dysfunction in US youth. Applying preclinical and clinical obesity definitions is challenging, given the limitations of the routinely collected clinical and epidemiological data that make up NHANES and in standard clinical practice.
Chaudhary et al. (Sun,) studied this question.