Regresar

Overweight and obesity prevalence in schoolchildren from san josé de cucuta, norte de santander, colombia

Abstract:

Introduction and Objective: Childhood overweight and obesity are emerging public health problems in many countries with a Western lifestyle related to dete-riorating health in both childhood and adulthood. Due to the scarce information on this topic in our commu-nity, the objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity in school children aged 6-13 years in the city of San José de Cúcuta, de-partment of Norte de Santander, Colombia. The aim of this study was to estimate the variance of the main quantitative variables of an epidemiological, biological and mathematical nature, in order to make a reliable estimate of the sample size required for the next study. Materials and Methods: A non-experimental, cross-sectional pilot study was done to determine the obesity prevalence in Cucuta, Norte de Santander, Colombia. Two-steps non-probabilistic sampling was carried out in 187 schoolchildren between 6 and 13 years old of both sexes from both elementary and secondary education system from San José de Cucuta Weight, height and body mass index (BMI) were determined for the diagnosis of overweight and obesity according to the WHO tables. The PAQ-C questionnaire and selected items from Pre-PAQ questionnaire were applied to their parents to evaluate PA and psycho-biological factors associated with PA. Results: The prevalence of obesity was 16.6% (n=31) and overweight 22.5% (n=42), normal weight 46.5% (n=87), risk for underweight 9.1% (n=17) and underweight 5.3% (n=10). Childhood overweight or obesity was significantly associated with sex, with a high ratio (X2=16.38, p=.003, V=.296). Male school children exhibited a statistically lower percentage of healthy weight than female school children (36.73% vs 58.43, z=2.97, p=.003), while, when examining obesity, a much higher fraction was evident in boys as opposed to girls (25.51% vs 6.74, z=3.44, p=.001). There was no evidence of a statistically significant relationship with the other variables. Conclusions: The prevalence of overweight and obesity agrees with the data reported for Cúcuta. Similarly, levels of overweight and obesity may be predominantly due to low levels of Physical activity compared to daily energy intake. However, this study is the first step to calculate an appropriate sample size for a large-scale study with better statistical power to assess the main psychosocial factors associated with childhood obesity.