Genetic Risk, Parental Feeding Practices, and Appetitive Traits in Early Life

Part of paid clinical trials in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Sponsor
Trustees of Dartmouth College
Study ID
NCT06534541
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • Childhood Obesity

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
27 Months - 72 Months
Healthy Volunteers
Accepted

Interventions

  • Attentional bias to food cues — BEHAVIORAL
    Measurement of the amount of attention given to food cues

Study Details

The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to expressing obesogenic appetitive traits, and those traits may mediate a genetic risk for obesity. Separately, parental feeding practices are emerging as an important, yet modifiable, influence on children's obesity risk. Coercive control feeding practices, such as strictly limiting a child's intake of highly palatable foods (restriction) and using food to control children's negative emotions (emotional feeding), are believed to be detrimental for young children because they impede self-regulatory skills around eating and may increase the saliency of highly palatable foods. The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time. Importantly, the investigators aim to understand how those effects differ based on children's underlying genetic risk for obesity. The investigators hypothesize that parents will respond to children's obesogenic appetitive traits by exhibiting more coercive control feeding practices (restriction, emotional feeding), which in turn, will promote future increase in obesogenic appetitive traits and overconsumption, leading to excess adiposity gain among children. Importantly, the investigators hypothesize children with a high genetic risk for obesity will be most susceptible to the negative effects of coercive control feeding practices because food is highly salient for them. The investigators will test the hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old. If successful, study findings may be leveraged to develop tailored strategies to help parents support healthy eating behaviors among their young children that consider the heterogeneity in obesogenic appetitive traits among young children due to genetic risk factors.

Key Dates

Start date
Jul 18, 2024
Status verified
Mar 2025
Primary completion
Aug 31, 2028
Completion
Aug 31, 2029

Study Design

Enrollment
330 participants (estimated)
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
CROSSOVER
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE

Arms

  • Active Comparator: Food Cues
    Attentional bias to Food cues experimental measurement
  • Active Comparator: Control Cues
    Attentional bias to food cues control measurement

Primary Outcome Measure

Coercive Parental Food Practices [ Time Frame: Measured every 6 months from baseline until 2.5 years after baseline. ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
Dartmotuh CollegeHanoverNew Hampshire03765
John Brand, PhD
[email protected]

Find similar trials in Hanover, NH

By research site
Dartmotuh College· Hanover, NH

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