A study that tracked thousands of children through adulthood found the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely to die prematurely, before age 55, of illness or a self-inflicted injury.
Youngsters with a condition called pre-diabetes were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those with high blood pressure were at some increased risk. But obesity was the factor most closely associated with an early death.
The new study analyzed data gathered from about 5,000 nondiabetic children born between 1945 and 1984. Adults who had the highest body mass index scores as children were 2.3 times as likely to have died early as those with the lowest scores.