A three-year-old girl who was said to have died of obesity was in fact the victim of a genetic abnormality, it has been reported.
BBC Radio 4's Today programme said scientists had told them that the girl highlighted in a Commons health committee report on Britain's obesity epidemic actually died from an inherited defect.
The report, which warned that obese children could become the first generation to die before their parents, recounted how the girl died of heart failure because she was so overweight.
Newspaper reports said that she was a Bengali girl from east London. She should have weighed around 2st 4lb but had a Body Mass Index (BMI) which equated to around 6st.
The case was reported by Dr Sheila McKenzie, a consultant at the Royal London Hospital. The hospital runs an obesity service for children which, even though it has only been open for three years, has an 11-month waiting list.
Dr McKenzie also described four children who required ventilatory assistance at home for sleep apnoea who were effectively "choking on their own fat".
The committee's report made recommendations to kick-start action amid gloomy predictions of a future where serious diseases caused by obesity are common.
The committee also called for a voluntary withdrawal of television advertising of junk food to children.