The Impact of Adding Sugars to Milk and Fruit on Adiposity and Diet Quality in Children: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of the Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS) Study.

Sugar, particularly as free sugars or sugar-sweetened beverages, significantly contributes to total energy intake, and, possibly, to increased body weight. Excessive consumption may be considered as a proxy of poor diet quality. However, no previous studies evaluated the association between the habit of adding sugars to "healthy" foods, such as plain milk and fresh fruit, and indicators of adiposity and/or dietary quality in children.

Prospective associations between dietary patterns and body composition changes in European children: the IDEFICS study.

Objective: To describe dietary patterns by applying cluster analysis and to describe the cluster memberships of European children over time and their association with body composition changes.

Design: The analyses included k-means clustering based on the similarities between the relative frequencies of consumption of forty-three food items and regression models were fitted to assess the association between dietary patterns and body composition changes.

Setting: Primary schools and pre-schools of selected regions in Italy, Estonia, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Germany and Spain.

Prospective associations between dietary patterns and high sensitivity C-reactive protein in European children: the IDEFICS study.

Purpose: This prospective study explores high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels in relation to dietary patterns at two time points in European children.

Methods: Out of the baseline sample of the IDEFICS study (n = 16,228), 4020 children, aged 2-9 years at baseline, with available hs-CRP levels and valid data from a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) at baseline (T0) and 2 years later (T1) were included. K-means clustering algorithm based on the similarities between relative food consumption frequencies of the FFQ was applied.

Early Life Factors and Inter-Country Heterogeneity in BMI Growth Trajectories of European Children: The IDEFICS Study.

Background: Starting from birth, this explorative study aimed to investigate between-country differences in body mass index (BMI) trajectories and whether early life factors explain these differences.

Methods: The sample included 7,644 children from seven European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden) participating in the multi-centre IDEFICS study. Information on early life factors and in total 53,409 repeated measurements of height and weight from 0 to <12 years of age were collected during the baseline (2007/2008) and follow-up examination (2009/2010) supplemented by records of routine child health visits.

Associations between early body mass index trajectories and later metabolic risk factors in European children: the IDEFICS study.

Faster growth seems to be a common factor in several hypotheses relating early life exposures to subsequent health. This study aims to investigate the association between body mass index (BMI) trajectories during infancy/childhood and later metabolic risk in order to identify sensitive periods of growth affecting health. In a first step, BMI trajectories of 3301 European children that participated in the multi-centre Identification and Prevention of Dietary and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS) study were modelled using linear-spline mixed-effects models.

Prospective associations between socio-economic status and dietary patterns in European children: the Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS) Study.

Exploring changes in children's diet over time and the relationship between these changes and socio-economic status (SES) may help to understand the impact of social inequalities on dietary patterns. The aim of the present study was to describe dietary patterns by applying a cluster analysis to 9301 children participating in the baseline (2-9 years old) and follow-up (4-11 years old) surveys of the Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants Study, and to describe the cluster memberships of these children over time and their association with SES. We applied the K-means clustering algorithm based on the similarities between the relative frequencies of consumption of forty-two food items.

Prospective analysis of the association of a common variant of FTO (rs9939609) with adiposity in children: results of the IDEFICS study.

Objectives: We investigated cross-sectionally and longitudinally the relationship between FTO rs9939609 and obesity-related characteristics in the European children of the IDEFICS project and the interaction of this variant with a lifestyle intervention.

Population And Methods: A cohort of 16224 children (2-9 years) was recruited into a population-based survey (T0) from eight European countries. A second survey (T1) reassessed the children two years later.