Overweight and obesity among school-going children of Lucknow city

Childhood obesity is increasingly being observed with changing lifestyles of families. The magnitude of overweight ranges from 9% to 27.5% and obesity ranges from 1% to 12.9% among Indian children. The present study was undertaken to study the magnitude of overweight/obesity and its determinants among children in Lucknow city. A list of government and private school was procured from Office of Basic Shiksha Adhikari. Three government and three private schools were selected by Simple Random Sampling. Students of 5th to 12th grades available at the time of study were included as study unit. Predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to elicit the information on family characteristics and individual characteristics. Height and weight were measured and BMI was calculated. Children with BMI of 25 and above were considered overweight and children with BMI more than 30 were considered obese. Overweight and obesity was found to be 4.17% and 0.73%, respectively; they together constitute 4.91% for overweight/obesity. The study revealed that the important correlates of overweight/obesity were father's education, father's occupation, class, children playing outdoor games for less than 30 min, and those consuming fast foods. Children of higher classes [above 8th standard] belonging to higher socioeconomic group with less outdoor activities and consuming fast foods were more predisposed to overweight/obesity. As a preventive strategy, there is a need to apply health and nutritional education programs for inculcating healthy life styles, and incorporating more outdoor activities in Physical Education Department of school curriculum

Reporting statistics in clinical trials published in Indian journals: a survey

Clinical trials are having very important place in the hierarchy of evidence based medicine. It has been observed that current methods of use and reporting of statistics of clinical trials are responsible for errors in the interpretation of results. We decided to evaluate clinical trials published during 2007 and 2008 in four Indian journals to analyses statistical issues which may affect the interpretation of results. We analyzed all the clinical trials [46] published in Indian Pediatrics, Indian Journal of Pharmacology, Journal of Postgraduate Medicine and Indian Journal of Dermatology, Vanereology and Leprology in 2007-2008. Median number of end points reported in clinical trials as well as median number of end points which were used for testing of significance was four. Twenty one [45%] of trials reported repeated measurement. Eighteen [39%] trials had three or more than three treatment groups. median number of test of significance was 15. post hoc subgroup analysis was done in 19% [9] of trials. P value was the sole criteria for interpretation of results in most of the trials; confidence interval was calculated in 11 [23%] trials. Baseline comparison between the study groups was done in 41 [89%] trials. In all cases comparison was done by statistical tests. Exact sample size was calculated in 18 [39%] trials. There are great chances of committing error during the interpretation of results of these trials because of multiple treatment groups, repeated measurements of endpoints, multiple tests of significance, over reliability on P value and less use of confidence interval. Statistical methods available to reduce chances of errors should be used and result should be interpreted accordingly