Six months after spraining an ankle, overweight and obese children are more likely than their peers to still have pain, swelling or weakness, new study findings indicate.

“In our study, ankle morbidity following an ankle sprain is a significant problem in children,” according to Dr. Nathan L. Timm at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and his colleagues. “However, overweight and obese children report greater symptoms six months after an ankle injury,” they add.

The number of people who are overweight has doubled over the past 20 years. Today, nearly 40 percent of children are overweight or obese, research shows.

In the current study, Timm and his team investigated how well obese children recover from an ankle sprain compared with their normal-weight peers.

Their study involved 199 children, aged 8 to 18 years, who were seen in the emergency department following an ankle injury. Eighty-five children were overweight or obese.

Six months after the ankle injury, the overweight children were more than twice as likely as the non-overweight participants to report pain with activity, persistent swelling and weakness, the researchers report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Specifically, 44 percent of the overweight group reported such symptoms, in comparison to 26 percent of the normal-weight children. Further, nearly 50 percent of obese children had persistent symptoms at follow-up, in comparison to 29 percent of their non-obese peers.

In fact, the report indicates, the children’s risk of experiencing such long-term ankle problems rose in step with increasing body mass index - a measure of weight that takes height into consideration.

In light of these findings, “it may be most important to target overweight and obese children for close follow-up and rehabilitation after an acute ankle injury,” Timm and his colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, January 2005.