A new study revealed that among young children, extreme obesity has managed to hit "alarming" levels, a conclusion drawn after analysis of the weights and heights of over 710,000 children aged 2 to 19 years.

'The prevalence of extreme obesity was much higher than we thought. 7% of boys and 5% of girls -- that is scary", said lead author of the study Corinna Koebnick, PhD, a Research Scientist at Kaiser Permanente.

Before the study's findings were revealed, Ms. Koebnick said that she was expecting a prevalence rate of maybe 3% to 5%, but the actual rates have been 7% and 5%, and for some of the ethnic groups, the occurrence of extreme obesity was even higher among children, hitting as much as 12%.

For the sake of study, researchers looked at medical charts that contained the heights and weights of over 700,000 children, who had inpatient and outpatient visits over the years 2007 and 2008.

"Extreme obesity is defined as 120% of the 95th percentile for weight for age and sex", Ms. Koebnick explained.