The Cochrane review ‘Interventions for preventing obesity in children’ has undergone its sixth update. This review has now been broken down into smaller age ranges. Today sees the publication of the primary school (children aged 5-11 years) and secondary school children and adolescents (aged 12-18 years) reviews. The pre-school (2-4 years) review is due to be published later this year.

The reviews looked at BMI, age- and sex-standardised BMI (zBMI) and percentile BMI, reported in randomised controlled trials with interventions aimed at changing diet, physical activity levels (including sedentary time) or both.

The reviews are informing guidance on childhood obesity, with NICE including the analyses in their new guidance due to be published later in 2024. The below images are a visual summary of each of the two updated reviews. Click the following links to access the full text and plain language summaries for the full reviews on 5-11 year olds and 12-18 year olds.

A podcast covering both reviews is also available at:
https://www.cochrane.org/podcasts/10.1002/14651858.CD015328.pub2
and also accessible from
https://www.cochrane.org/CD015328 and https://www.cochrane.org/CD015330,
and on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts and on Google Podcasts.
Chinese version here.