Tackling Childhood Obesity in Europe with the Help of Nuclear Techniques: IAEA Symposium at European Congress on Obesity

Every third eleven-year-old child in Europe and Central Asia is overweight or obese, according to the WHO. Changing dietary habits, sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity are the leading causes of rising obesity rates. Without interventions, overweight and obese children will likely stay overweight or obese into adulthood and will be at increased risk of developing noncommunicable illnesses, such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, at a younger age.

“Closely linked to regional WHO strategies on childhood obesity and on prevention of non-communicable diseases, the project will provide much-needed evidence base to formulate policies and design effective interventions,” said Inese Siksna, a nutritionist at Latvia’s Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment.

During the symposium, IAEA experts discussed how body composition can be used as a tool to accurately monitor obesity, and representatives of the WHO and other partners discussed the importance of using accurate data, obtained with the help of stable isotope techniques, in policymaking.

Aida Filipović Hadžiomeragić, from the Public Health Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, noted the importance of the collaboration in sharing expertise and knowledge. “Previously held workshops and trainings have greatly assisted representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as doctors, nurses and technicians to gain the necessary skills and expertise to assess body composition using the deuterium dilution technique by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and bioelectrical impedance, and to use accelerometery to measure physical activity levels and sedentary behaviour among children,” she said.

The IAEA has supplied FTIR equipment to authorities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Montenegro to help with analysis of deuterium enrichment in saliva samples from all ten participating countries. The project is implemented through the IAEA technical cooperation programme.

The deuterium dilution technique may also be used as a reference method to validate existing approaches to screen and monitor obesity in Latvia, Ms Siksna said.

The symposium was organized in collaboration with the World Health Organization-European Regional Office (WHO-Europe), European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) and N8 AgriFood, a multi-disciplinary research programme across eight universities in the North of England.

The countries participating in the project are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Hungary, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Latvia, Portugal and Ukraine. The IAEA, through its technical cooperation programme, is assisting countries in the overall coordination of the project, in providing equipment, expertise and training.

Childhood obesity will be also addressed during the upcoming International Symposium on Understanding the Double Burden of Malnutrition for Effective Interventions, to take place 10-13 December 2018 in Vienna.