Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome among Survivors of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Abstract

Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with the current cure rates reaching more than 80% emphasizes the necessity to determine treatment related long-term effects. Late effects may occur soon after stopping the therapy but also many years or decades later, and include secondary malignancy, cardiotoxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine abnormalities, obesity and metabolic syndrome (MS). In the current study we aimed to evaluate the frequency and risk factors for the development of obesity and metabolic syndrome in ALL survivors, and to study alterations in their body composition in comparison to healthy controls. The study was conducted on 29 patients with cured ALL recruited from Pediatric Oncology Clinic at Ain Shams University Children’s Hospital during the period from December 2016 to December 2017. Another 30 healthy subjects were enrolled as controls. All participants were subjected to full history taking, full clinical examination including full anthropometric assessment (weight, height, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC) and waist: hip ratio (WHr) as well as body composition analysis, and laboratory investigation including complete blood count (CBC), fasting glucose, fasting insulin, lipid profile and serum leptin.