Child siblings may influence each other’s obesity risk

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Child siblings may influence each other’s obesity risk

By Shereen Lehman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Brothers or sisters might have a greater influence than parents on a child’s likelihood of being obese, suggests new U.S. research. The study, based on data from the larger national Family Health Habits Survey, found that kids with obese parents were about twice as likely to be obese themselves, but having an obese sibling raised a child’s risk of obesity five-fold or more in some cases. “When you look at a two-child family, a child's obesity status was more strongly related with their sibling than with their parent,” said Mark Pachucki, a researcher with the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the analysis. Past research has shown that parents’ obesity, health habits and the environment they create in the household can all influence whether their kids will be obese, Pachuki and his colleagues note in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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