ABSTRACT
Background: The frequency of obesity is increasing steadily in Chile. Aim: To assess the prevalence of obesity and overweight in children and teenagers living in three southern Chilean cities. Material and Methods: The database of an evaluation performed in 2006 in schools, was used to obtain weight and height of 32514 subjects aged 12 ± 4 years (48 percent males). Criteria proposed by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were used to define obesity and overweight. Results: According to CDC criteria the prevalence of overweight and obesity was 11.2 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. According to IOTF criteria, the fgures were 13.2 and 4 percent, respectively. The higher frequency of overweight and obesity was observed among children aged less than eight years. Conclusions: There is a high frequency of obesity and overweight in the studied sample.
Subject(s)
Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Obesity/epidemiology , Chile/epidemiology , Logistic Models , Overweight/epidemiology , Prevalence , Reference Values , Risk Factors , SchoolsABSTRACT
Background: Considering the high prevalence of obesity among children attending elementary schools, it is important to know the evolution of body weight when these children reach adolescent. Aim: To analyze the changes in nutritional status of children between the first year of elementary school and the first year of high school. Material and methods: A historical cohort of children that were assessed when they started elementary school in 1997 was evaluated again eight years later Weight and height were measured and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Obesity was considered as a BMI over percentile 95 of Center for Disease Control (CDC) references. The concordance between nutritional assessment in both periods and the risk of obesity during adolescence, based on previous weight were also calculated. Results: Data from 117,815 children were analyzed. The prevalence of obesity in the first year of elementary school and the first year of high school was 14.6 percent and 7 percent, respectively. The mean weight increase during the eight years period was 32.6±8.4 kg corresponding to 108 percent±28.1 percent of the expected increase. There was a low diagnostic concordance between both assessment periods. There was a reduction of under and overweight and a higher proportion of subjects with normal weight in the second assessment period. The risk for being obese in the first year of high school was 6.4 times greater for children that were obese in the first year of elementary school (confidence intervals 6.1-6.9. Conclusions: There was an important reduction in the proportion of obesity between the age of 6 and 14 years. The risk of obesity at 14 years of age was strongly influenced by the presence of obesity at 6 years of age. The broader BMIranges for normality for high school children could give a false image of the nutritional status of teenagers.