Higher total fat mass and trunk fat in younger children predict lower left ventricular mass years later, but the opposite is true for 17-year-olds, a longitudinal study has found.

The findings, based on repeated dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans, suggest adolescence “might be the golden opportunity to avert potential pathologic alterations of cardiac indices”, wrote the researcher from the University of Eastern Finland.

The results also suggest that using BMI to measure obesity in younger children, when it does not distinguish between lean mass and fat mass, may have obscured the cardioprotective effects of relatively low fat mass in children, he wrote in the European Journal of Endocrinology.

The study involved 1803 British children, followed up from ages nine to 24, who had undergone echocardiography at ages 17 and 24.