Add one more health risk associated with obesity among young girls: poor grades and academics. A study conducted throughout the UK and published in the International Journal of Obesity is the first to look at obesity and grades in teens. While no such clear association could be deciphered among boys, differences in girls were clear.

Of the 6,000 children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, girls who were obese at age 11 had lower academic achievement at 11, 13 and 16 compared with students with normal weight. In the core subjects of English, math and science average grades were equivalent to US Ds in the obese group instead of the average Cs in the overall sampling.

“There is a clear pattern which shows that girls who are in the obese range are performing more poorly than their counterparts in the healthy weight range throughout their teenage years,” says Dr Josie Booth, University of Dundee.

The team called on educators to recognize “the wide-reaching detrimental impact of obesity on educational outcomes in this age group.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2012, over one third of children and adolescents in the US were overweight or obese.