Prevalência do excesso de peso em escolares do município de Belo Horizonte/MG - 2ª fase do estudo do coração de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Objective: Determine the prevalence of body weight excess in children at the Belo Horizonte city, Minas Gerais State. Methods: This research consists in a cross-sectional prevalence study, whose data were obtained from a survey entitled "Comparison of two school-based programmes for health behavior change", corresponding to Stage 2 of the "Belo Horizonte Heart Study." The sample consisted of 2038 students enrolled between the 2nd and the 6th grade of elementary school, in 17 public and private schools of the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State. Analysis of sociodemographic (age, gender, skin color, and type of school) and anthropometric (waist circumference, triceps skinfold, subscapular skinfolds, suprailiac skinfold, waist-hip ratio, body mass index) variables were performed. Results: The sample comprised 50.4% of male students, the average age was 9 years, the skin color was the predominant brown (42.8%) and 65% were students of public schools (state and local). The highest incidences of body weight excess were found in males (34.5%) in whites (36.6%) among schoolchildren under the age of 9 years old (34.1%) and finally in private school network (39.2%). The other anthropometric measures related to adiposity had the highest prevalence of increased values also in the private school network, showed no positive association with gender, waist-hip-ratio, body weight excess high values were more prevalent in whites, boys and students younger than 9 years. The waist circumference together with the sum of skinfold measurements were further among schoolchildren over the age of 10 years old. Conclusion: The results confirm that the epidemic of childhood obesity reached not only the developed countries but increasingly in developing countries. Concern is the persistence of the condition and and obesity development in adulthood, thus causing a number of chronic diseases with high mortality rates in our country, as in the case of cardiovascular diseases. Thus, more powerful and urgent actions should be directed to combat this condition that in most cases could be prevented or even when installed is potentially reversible.