Concordance of obesity and overweight prevalences from real and perceived BMI in Jujenean Scholl children´s.

DIPIERRI, JE; ROMAN, ME; ALFARO, EL; CARRILLO, R; BEJARANO, IF

Congreso; XIII International Congress of Human Growth and Clinical Auxology; 2014

BACKGROUND AND AIMS:Overweight (OW) and obesity (OB) are currently the main malnutrition disorder in children and adolescents in countries with different socioeconomic development. According to the reference (WHO, CDC, IOTF) the prevalence of OW and OB range from 9-23 % and 9-44 % respectively in schoolchildren?s of Jujuy province (Northwest Argentina). Diet, physical activity and psychological factors including the perception of body image are factors related to this epidemic. The aim of this study was to analyze the concordance of OW and OB prevalences calculated from the real BMI (rBMI) and perceived (pBMI) in jujenean schoolchildren?s. SUBJECT AND METHODS:The height and weight data were obtained from 2093 students (1143 women; 950 men) aged 8-16 years-old from San Salvador de Jujuy. To determine the pBMI modified Stunkard silhouettes which consists of 9 figures by sex progressively more robust and with assigned BMI were used. Students selected silhouette with which they identified. Prevalence of Thinness (TH), Normal Weight (NW), OW and OB were calculated for the rBMI and pBMI using IOTF cutoffs. The agreement between nutritional categories was assessed using the kappa index classified as poor (≤ 0.20), regular (0.20 to 0.40), moderate (0.41 to 0,60), good (0.61 to 0.80) and very good (> 0.80). RESULTS:Table 1 shows that, in general, the prevalence of OW calculated with pBMI are higher and that virtually any schoolchildren perceived themselves as OB. Regardless of gender and age the concordance between pBMI and rBMI prevalences was poor or regular. CONCLUSIONS:The lack of concordance between prevalences indicates that probably men and women schoolchildrens have distorted perception of their body image.