A new study from Italy has found that the size of a child’s wrist could offer an early indicator of their susceptibility to cardiovascular disease . The research, by scientists at Sapienza University of Rome and published in the journal Circulatio, examined if a child’s wrist circumference was linked to their blood sugar and resistance to insulin, the hormone that regulates levels of blood sugar.
Although wrist size was found to be associated with higher insulin levels and insulin resistance, the research didn’t confirm of having larger wrists actually increased the risk of cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes for the child in the future.
The cross-sectional study, which was carried out on 637 children with an average age of 10 years and who were either obese or overweight, did not offer a direct identification of cardiovascular risk based on wrist size, but did show that a reduced sensitivity to insulin was linked with later cardiovascular disease.
The research assessed if there was an easily detectable clinical marker of insulin resistance, after previous studies had revealed that excess circulating insulin in the blood is linked with increased bone mass. They suggested that the overall wrist circumference could be a viable measure of how wrist bones have grown as a response to insulin levels . It was indicated that this method of measuring skeletal frame size is not affected by body fat variation.

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