The risk of heart disease in women can be predicted as early as the teen years, and appears closely linked with childhood obesity, according to a study presented Tuesday in Atlanta by experts from Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati.

        Experts say results of the study add new urgency to addressing the growing problem of excessively fat children in America.

        “These results suggest that preventive efforts (for heart disease) should be aimed at weight control,” said Dr. Tom Kimball, director of echocardiography at Cincinnati Children's and senior author of the study.

        “Echocardiography should be considered a screening tool in obese adolescent and young adult women to identify those at risk for cardiovascular disease,” he said.

        The heart disease findings come from echocardiograms — ultrasound scans of the heart — performed over several years on 575 healthy 19-year-old women. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

        The study found that one of every four young women tested had an increase in either the mass or the thickness of the wall of the heart's left ventricle, a condition called left ventricular hypertrophy.

        This thickening of the main pumping chamber of the heart has long been known to be a risk factor for heart attacks, strokes and heart failure. What's new is that the problem can be detected so early in life.

        “Being seriously overweight puts a strain on the heart that can be detected as early as adolescence and young adulthood,” Dr. Kimball said.

        Dr. Douglas Zipes, president of the American College of Cardiology, said the study breaks new ground in understanding the causes of heart disease.

        The Children's Hospital study was one of the six most-significant heart disease prevention studies to be featured at this year's cardiology conference, during which more than 2,500 research papers were presented, said spokeswoman Lisa Clough.

        Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death for women and men. More than 500,000 women a year die from heart disease — more than the next 14 causes of death for women combined — including breast cancer, according to the American Heart Association.

        Linking childhood weight and heart disease raises concerns because the rate of obesity among children has soared in recent years.

        “Unfortunately, we're working against an environment that's very difficult to combat. We live in a society that is very much geared towards consuming too many calories and not participating in enough activity to burn them off,” said Dr. Stephen Daniels, an environmental health expert at Children's Hospital who has been tracking health issues among the young women in the study.

        About 12.5 percent of American youths ages 6-17 were seriously overweight in 2000, a percentage that has more than doubled in the past 30 years, according to the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, established by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

        Tuesday's report came as a surprise to Dr. Santosh Menon, co-director of the heart failure treatment program for the Ohio Heart Group, a large Cincinnati cardiology group. Normally, hypertrophy is not detected until much later in life, usually after a patient is diagnosed with high blood pressure or other risk factors for heart disease.

        In older adults, LV hypertrophy can be reduced with medications. But for younger people who haven't shown other signs of illness, the preferred treatment may be weight control.

        “Weight loss can reduce hypertrophy. You really want to avoid putting young people on medications unless it is absolutely necessary,” Dr. Menon said.

        Children's Hospital researchers noted that the majority of the young women with the heart-thickening condition were obese.

        In fact, obesity was the only consistent factor in women with this condition. Smoking, high blood pressure and other factors were not clearly associated with the problem, Dr. Kimball reported.

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