Background/Purpose: Chronic rheumatic diseases in children and adolescents increase cardiovascular risk. Thus, knowing the eating habits, biomarkers of lipid metabolism and the lifestyle of patients and their parents will allow the development of prevention strategies. Our goal was to describe the classification of body mass index, dietary intake, physical activity and lipid metabolism biomarkers of parents of children and adolescents with chronic rheumatic diseases and compare them with those of their children.

Methods: Cross-sectional study with 91 parents and their respective children diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (n = 30 / 33.0%), juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (n = 41 / 45.0%) and juvenile dermatomyositis (n = 20 / 22.0%). We evaluated: anthropometric data, food intake, physical activity, total cholesterol and fractions, triglycerides, apolipoproteins A-I and B.

Results: Most parents were female, as were their children (89.8 and 83.5% respectively). The average age of parents was 40.5 ± 7.4 years. The disease length was 4.5 ± 3.4 years and active disease was observed in 56% of patients. Eighty percent of overweight children/adolescents also had parents with the same nutritional diagnosis. There was a moderate association between total lipid intake (Cramer’s V test = 0.254; p = 0.037) and weak for saturated fat (Cramer’s V test = 0.219; p = 0.050) and cholesterol (Cramer’s V test = 0.234; p = 0.025) of the parents and their children. When the daily protein intake in grams per weight (kilograms) was evaluated, there was a positive linear correlation (r = 0.2239; p = 0.033) between parents and children intake. The prevalence of dyslipidemia of children/ adolescents and parents was 83.5% and 82.4%, respectively. Parents and children/ adolescents mostly had low HDL-c (52.8 and 64.8% respectively).

Conclusion: The present study emphasizes to the high prevalence of overweight, dyslipidemia, physical inactivity and central adiposity in the parents of children and adolescents with chronic rheumatic diseases. There was an association between inadequate fat consumption by parents and their children; but the same was not observed for BMI classification, lipid profile and for physical activity. The findings point to the importance of parental involvement in nutritional intervention strategies.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/anthropometric-assessment-and-food-intake-of-parents-of-pediatric-patients-with-chronic-rheumatic-diseases/