Childhood and Adolescent Obesity and Weight Management

Dear Colleagues,

Obesity is a leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with rapidly and unrelentingly increasing rates in children and adolescents. Obesity, especially that starting from an early age, increases the risk of metabolic, cardiovascular, reproductive, orthopedic, mental, allergic/autoimmune, and neoplastic diseases, and curtails life expectancy. It is strongly related to chronic stress and associated with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, polycystic ovary syndrome, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, and depression. Obesity and its accompanying manifestations also negatively affect specific populations, such as childhood cancer survivors. There is an urgent need to understand all of the factors contributing to childhood and adolescent obesity in order to best implement effective treatment and prevention approaches, both of which have proven to be elusive so far.

The goal of this Special Issue of Children is to highlight recent data pertaining to the diagnosis, prevalence, etiology, treatment, and prevention of childhood and adolescent obesity and its short- and long-term sequelae. In addition, it will review the methods and outcomes of multidisciplinary body weight management programs in this age group. We welcome original research papers, meta-analyses, and reviews filling gaps in our knowledge in the above domains, as well as describing novel treatment and prevention approaches. We also encourage submissions that explore how chronic stress and physical, cognitive, developmental, and mental health conditions may impact on childhood and adolescent body weight and relate to obesity complications.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Flora Bacopoulou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• obesity
• body weight
• children
• adolescents
• insulin resistance
• type 2 diabetes mellitus
• metabolic syndrome
• polycystic ovary syndrome
• cancer
• stress
• mental health.