A 13 year old boy, weighing 16 stone, has collapsed and died due to his ‘severe’ obesity.
The teenager is believed to be the youngest victim of the frightening rise in youngsters who are overweight.
Doctors said the boy died from a blood clot that had travelled from his leg to his lung.
Experts described the death as shocking and a sobering indication of the seriousness of the obesity epidemic affecting the nation’s children.
The 13-year-old British boy died weighing 16 stone after developing a blood clot in his leg
One said: ‘I have never heard of a child so young having their death put down to obesity. It just shows how bad things are getting.
‘Children are fairly resilient and one wouldn’t expect an obese child to die so young. Yes, maybe in their 20s or 30s, if they carried on remaining obese, but not so young.’
A post mortem by a pathologist said he could find no other reason for the clot developing apart from the youngster’s ‘severe’ obesity.
Despite obesity not being a natural cause of death the local coroner ruled the death was natural and decided there would be no inquest.
The boy – who is not being named to protect the family’s privacy – had been to see his GP the day before he died complaining of swollen feet.
The post mortem report noted the boy had been gaining weight from a young age. By the time he died earlier this year he had a body mass index of 42 and was twice his recommended weight.
NHS school nurses weighed the dead boy at 10 and sent and sent a letter home to his parents about his weight but it was apparently never followed up.
Doctors attributed his death to ‘severe’ obesity and said he also had evidence of liver damage
The boy’s post mortem report also showed he had an enlarged liver with evidence of fatty liver disease, an early sign of liver failure due to obesity.
A leading obesity expert, Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said last night that schools and other professionals should do more to flag up overweight kids.
Dr Jude Oben who works at London’s Royal Free Hospital said children and adults were at high risk of bloods clots due to their obesity.
He said: ‘I’ve not heard of it in a child. It is a shocking and tragic case. The obesity constricts the blood flow in the legs, a clot forms due to sluggish flow, it breaks off and lodges in the pulmonary artery in the lung..’
Experts said pulmonary embolisms are exceedingly rare in children. But like adults, they are at risk of following surgery or air travel, or if they have a genetic blood disorder.
Tam Fry described the teen’s death as a shocking waste of life.
He said: ‘We have still not got to grips with obesity in children.. Children are being weighed when they start school, and then again at 11. Why was this boy not helped?’
Children and adults are said to be at high risk of developing life-threatening blood clots if they are obese
‘We have complained for some time that picking up and treating obesity through schools is hit and miss.’
Professor Alastair Sutcliffe, a consultant paediatrician at University College of London Hospitals, said: ‘What a tragic case. I have never come across a child dying of obesity.
‘This could be a new trend. We have been saying for some time that the current generation might not live as a long as their parents but the thought of child dying before they are out of their teenage years due to obesity is truly shocking.’
In 2011 the Government’s then Liver Czar, Professor Martin Lombard, warned that 500,000 children were at risk of developing life-threatening fatty liver disease because they are overweight, putting them at risk of hear attacks and stroke.
The condition can worsen to the extent that the liver become scarred causing liver failure or cancer.