WEIGHT GAIN IN CHILDREN DURING THE COVID-19 QUARANTINE PERIOD.

Dear Editor,

WEIGHT GAIN IN CHILDREN DURING THE COVID‐19 QUARANTINE PERIOD

Recent research on COVID‐19 has highlighted psychological and emotional effects of the disease and quarantine. , While are important, we also wanted to point out one indirect effect of the pandemic resulting from quarantine.

In Turkey, the quarantine measures have been extreme. For the past 3 months – between March and June – children under the age of 18 were under strict restrictions in the form of curfews and closure of schools and kindergartens; resulting in the kids not having outside time for approximately 3 months. Most children stayed with their parents and/or grandparents and were unable to attend regular follow ups. After the strict restrictions were lifted, when follow ups resumed, we observed striking weight gain in some children.

Here, we present data of some of our patients' pre‐restriction and post‐restrictions weights in order to demonstrate the changes (Table 1). We think that children's excessive weight gain in the 3‐month period may be linked to the mother's/grandmother's effect. Because children are constantly at home, the mother's/grandmother's focus is more on the child's diet (such as carb‐heavy diets and eating more often than usual), which may be a reason for the aforementioned relation. Children's physical activity was severely limited for these 3 months, which may also be a contributing factor to weight gain.

Table 1

Pre‐restriction and post‐restriction weight differences in our patients

	Pre‐restriction			Post‐restriction
Gender	Age, months	Weight, kg	Weight percentile, %	Age, months	Weight, kg	Weight percentile, %	Change in percentile
Male	14	10	25	19	12.1	50	Increased by 25%
Male	18	11.5	25	21	13	75	Increased by 50%
Female	21	11.6	50	24	12.9	75	Increased by 25%
Female	30	12.1	25–50	33	13.2	50	Increased by approximately 25%

We want to bring more attention to the potential of overweight in children as a result of the quarantine situation, especially in Turkey where more serious quarantine measures were taken. Our observations should be brought to attention as they may contribute to the wellbeing of children.