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Albert J. Stunkard, MD; Robert I. Berkowitz, MD

JAMA. 1990;264(19):2550-2551.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Two propositions about obesity are generally accepted: fat children grow into fat adults,^1,2 and weight lost in treatment programs is promptly regained.³

It is against this background that the 10-year follow-up of treatment of obese children, reported by Epstein and colleagues⁴ in this issue of THE JOURNAL, must be considered. For this study showed that obese children treated for a very short period of time (eight weekly meetings followed by six monthly meetings) showed effects of treatment 10 years later, when they were significantly less obese than children in a comparison group.

How are we to explain these surprising results?

Three possible explanations seem unlikely. Differential attrition between treatment and control groups is always a possibility in long-term follow-up studies, and there was some attrition in this study. The attrition, however, was limited—only 14 of 75 children became unavailable for follow-up—and it was distributed about evenly among . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia (Drs Stunkard and Berkowitz), and The Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic (Dr Berkowitz).

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 133 S 36th St, Suite 507, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3246 (Dr Stunkard).

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