Prevalence of overweight in children aged 7 to 10 from Vitória/ES, Brazil: A population based approach

Normal 0 21 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This paper aims to determine the prevalence of overweight and its associated factors on a school based sample through a cross sectional population based study with a sample of 1282 children aged 7 to 10 from Vitória-ES, Brazil. Anthropometric data was analyzed according to IOTF recommendations; information on eating habits, physical activities, birth weight, early feeding practices and other socioeconomic and parental topics through an interview and questionnaire sent home. T-student and Chi-square tests were used to determine differences between means and proportions, OR was used to evaluate associations between the outcome and associated factors. All variables reaching significance levels <0.10 were inserted on hierarchic logistic regression to determine the final model. Analysis was performed using significance levels of α=0.05 and CI 95%. 15.3% of the children are overweight and 8% obese, adding up to a final 23.3%. On the hierarchic multivariate analysis, age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity didn’t presented significantly different prevalences (p<0.05) while being an only child (OR 1.73, 95%CI 1.09-2.75), large for gestational age (OR 3.45 95%CI 1.34-8.84) and having an overweight father (OR 1.87, 95%CI 1.21-2.89) were risk factors to overweight in children while having a highly educated mother (OR 0.38 95%CI 0.19-0.78) was a protective factor.  Although experiencing different development stages, rates of overweight found are similar to ones from other Brazilian studies and from developed countries; therefore, both developing and developed countries must define actions to prevent and control overweight guided by research findings on classic and specific associated factors.