Body Mass Index and Acute Injury Risk in Children.

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and acute injury risk in children. Methods & Materials: Design: Case based, case control study. Population: Children age 5-17 years presenting to BC Children's Hospital Emergency Department. Five hundred patients were screened and 414 patients were enrolled. Analytical strategy: Multivariate logistic regression to estimate the odds of injury occurrence by BMI categories (obese, overweight, and neither) adjusting for potential confounders. Results: Chi-squared analysis revealed that the mild association between obesity and injury occurrence in our descriptive statistics was most likely due to chance (P=0.96). Logistical regression, after adjusting the odds ratio for age, sex, activity level and socioeconomic status (SES), did not reveal an increased risk of acute injury in overweight and obese children (OR=0.08 [0.41, 1.55] for overweight and OR=1.16 [0.58, 2.31] for obesity). Analysis of secondary outcomes failed to show an increased risk of fracture in overweight and obese children after the final model was adjusted for age, sex, activity level and SES (OR=0.151 [0.019, 1.234] for overweight and OR=0.984 [0.298, 3.244] for obesity). Conclusions: Our study did not find increasing BMI to be associated with an increased risk of acute injury in children. Future Directions: We will continue to further analyze the data by focusing on the types of activities and the mechanisms of injury. A large scale, multi-site study investigating the relationship between obesity and risk of fracture will begin in the summer of 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]