Grant: Operating Grant

Almost 2,000,000 Canadian children are obese and meet criteria for needing weight management. The main health concern is that obese children can develop Type 2 diabetes putting them at risk for blood clots. Blood clots lead to low blood flow to important body organs, for example, if blood clots lodge in the brain they can cause a stroke. We know that obese children are at increased risk for blood clots including strokes. We also know that obese children, even if they do not have a blood clot when young, that when they grow up, they will have an even bigger risk for blood clots when they are young adults. The experts believe the best way to ensure you are not at a big risk for blood clots as a young adult is to minimise the risk when you are a child. We would like to learn why obese children are at risk for blood clots. We think the risk is associated with Type 2 diabetes disease components called insulin resistance and inflammatory response.Also, we want to see if we can prevent blood clot risk by diet or lifestyle interventions. First, we will test the blood clotting system in obese children compared to normal weight children to see why they are at risk of having blood clots.Secondly, we will see what will happen when these children participate in a lifestyle management program as we think the program will decrease their risk for blood clots. Third, we will watch how blood clot risk develops in a juvenile obese animal model.We will see relationships of risk for blood clots with insulin resistance and inflammatory response as these animals develop obesity in their teenage years.Finally, we will try to minimize blood clot risk by changing the animal diet to include fish oil. We already know that eating fish oil stops the inflammatory response so we think it will decrease blood clot risk. If we can learn why obese children are at risk for blood clots we could prevent stroke in childhood and prevent stroke and heart attacks when they become adults.