Sobrepeso em crianças de 7 a 10 anos e fatores associados : um estudo de base escolar em Vitória, ES

Abstract

Overweight in infancy has become a major public health concern over the last two decades in both developed and underdeveloped countries. As well as in adults, overweight in children is associated to several health complications such as type-II diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, orthopedic problems among other physical, emotional and social consequences that began representing a great burden to public health systems. The present study aims to determine the prevalence of overweight and associated factors on a population sample of scholars from Vitória/ES. This is a school based populational cross sectional study, carried out among 1.282 from a total of 18.500 children aged 7 to 10 years old regularly attending public and private schools in Vitória/ES. Anthropometric data from the children was collected during visits to the schools along with an interview; overweight was determined as BMI≥P85 when compared to NCHS reference charts (2000). Parents were asked to answer a questionnaire on socioeconomic, health and living conditions, eating and exercising habits. T-student and Chi-square tests were used to determine differences between means and proportions, odds ratio was used to assess associations between the outcome and predictive factors. All variables reaching significance levels below 0,10 were inserted on hierarchic logistic regression to determine factors associated to overweight on the final model. All of the analysis were carried out using significance levels of α=0.05 and CI 95%. Overweight prevalence reached 23,2% without presenting statistical differences between sexes, type of school and age. The multivariate analyses showed that paternal overweight (OR 1.62 – CI95% 1.04-2.51), being large for gestational age (OR 4.67 – CI95% 1.65-13.22), being an only child (OR 1.92 – CI95% 1.2-3.05) and superior maternal education (OR 0.45 – CI95% 0.22-0.93) kept statistical association with the outcome. Overweight prevalence found for the sample is high above recent estimations for the Brazilian population, presenting itself regardless of age, sex or school type. This finding shows the urge to address this problem using preventive and corrective strategies focused on health eating, exercising, maintaining healthy BMI for both, parents and children.