September 14, 2026, 12:25 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
Many cardiovascular and metabolic diseases only become apparent in adulthood. However, their biological foundations could develop much earlier. Researchers have therefore investigated whether typical changes can already be found in children’s blood that might indicate future diseases.
Disease Risks Emerge in Childhood
The U.S. study shows that biological changes associated with metabolic and cardiovascular risks can already be detected in children’s blood. Some of the identified protein patterns are also found in adults and are linked to later diseases.
The results suggest that certain blood proteins could reflect early signs of health risks—long before corresponding diseases develop. This is particularly relevant because standard tests such as fasting blood sugar often miss many risk cases (up to 70 percent) in children. The findings were published in the journal “Nature Metabolism.”1
How the Study Was Conducted
The researchers aimed to determine whether blood proteins could help identify an increased risk for cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic diseases early on. Current standard tests might overlook some at-risk children.
To do this, they studied 273 Hispanic or Latino children and adolescents from Texas, with an average age of 13. The scientists measured body fat, blood pressure, blood lipids, and values related to liver and kidney function and glucose metabolism. They also identified more than 5,400 proteins in the blood.
They then developed typical patterns from the protein values for six areas:
- inflammatory obesity,
- liver changes,
- cholesterol,
- blood pressure,
- kidney function, and
- insulin resistance.
They checked whether these patterns also appeared in adults by examining two additional groups: 494 adults from the same region and more than 28,000 participants from the UK Biobank.
Similar Protein Patterns in Children and Adults
Of the more than 5,400 proteins studied, 1,064 were associated with at least one of the health characteristics examined. Sixty-five proteins were linked to at least four of the six areas studied. This suggests that some proteins reflect not just individual risk factors but are associated with multiple metabolic and cardiovascular processes.
Many of these associations were also observed in adults: About 64 percent of the protein associations found in children were statistically detectable in adults and pointed in the same direction. The agreement was particularly strong for body fat and liver health, while it was weaker for blood pressure.
Genetic Evidence of Causal Relationships
To verify whether the proteins are indeed causally involved in disease development, the researchers also used genetic analyses of up to 2.5 million adults. It was found that genetically altered protein levels were associated with the same increased disease risk.
The protein patterns were also relevant for later disease risk. In the UK Biobank, signatures for inflammatory obesity, liver changes, and insulin resistance were particularly associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, various cardiovascular diseases, sleep apnea, and higher overall mortality.
Another analysis suggests that the measured protein changes are not immutable. In adults treated with the diabetes and obesity drug semaglutide for 68 weeks, many of the proteins associated with increased risk changed in a favorable direction.
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Study Assessment
A strength of the study is the extensive analysis of adults, which included large data sets from the UK Biobank and investigations into how treatment with semaglutide affects the relevant proteins.
However, the study also has limitations. The group of 273 children studied was relatively small and came from a single region on the U.S.-Mexican border. Whether the results can be generalized to children from other populations remains to be seen.
Additionally, the children were not followed over decades into adulthood. Therefore, the study cannot directly show whether the affected children actually develop diseases over their lifetimes. The influence of puberty could not be fully isolated, as most of the adolescents studied were already in this developmental phase.
Some authors report consulting, financial, or patent interests. The study was primarily funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. According to the authors, the funders had no influence on the planning, evaluation, or publication of the study.
Previous Studies with Comparable Results
The results align with a series of similar studies. A Danish study of more than 4,000 children and adolescents also found protein patterns associated with obesity, blood lipids, blood pressure, and insulin resistance.2 In 184 children who participated in a weight reduction program for a year, both body fat and blood inflammation levels decreased—without medication.
Previous research has shown that childhood risk factors indeed manifest in later diseases. An international analysis of nearly 38,600 people, followed for an average of 35 years, demonstrated that the worse the BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood lipids were in childhood, the more frequently fatal cardiovascular events occurred in middle age.3