Abstract
BackgroundWe evaluated growth and nutritional status of preschool children between 2 and 6 years old from low income families from 14 daycare centers.MethodsCross-sectional study with 1544 children from daycare centers of Santo Andre, Brazil. Body weight (W), height (H) and body mass index (BMI) were classified according to the 2000 National Center for Health Statistics (CDC/NCHS). Cutoff points for nutritional disorders: -2 z scores and 2.5 and 10 percentiles for malnutrition risk, 85 to 95 percentile for overweight and above BMI 95 percentile for obesity. Stepwise Forward Regression method was used including age, gender, birth weight, breastfeeding duration, age of mother at birth and period of time they attended the daycare center.ResultsChildren presented mean z scores of H, W and BMI above the median of the CDC/NCHS reference. Girls were taller and heavier than boys, while we observed similar BMI between both genders. The z scores tended to rise with age. A Pearson Coefficient of Correlation of 0.89 for W, 0.93 for H and 0.95 for BMI was documented indicating positive association of age with weight, height and BMI. The frequency of children below -2 z scores was lower than expected: 1.5% for W, 1.75% for H and 0% for BMI, which suggests that there were no malnourished children. The other extremity of the distribution evidenced prevalence of overweight and obesity of 16.8% and 10.8%, respectively.ConclusionLow income preschool children are in an advanced stage of nutritional transition with a high prevalence of overweight.
Highlights
We evaluated growth and nutritional status of preschool children between 2 and 6 years old from low income families from 14 daycare centers
We evaluated the relationship between obesity/overweight and child age, gender, birth weight and duration of breast feeding. This is a cross-sectional study of anthropometric data in preschool children from 14 daycare centers linked to the Department of Health and the Federation of charities (FEAS) in Santo Andre, SP, Brazil
Regarding the average growth achieved by the group of children as a whole, Table 3 shows that in the three variables studied: height, weight and body mass index (BMI), the mean z score was above the reference values of the CDC/NCHS and that this difference was much higher with respect to weight and BMI
Summary
We evaluated growth and nutritional status of preschool children between 2 and 6 years old from low income families from 14 daycare centers. With respect to nutritional transition this situation results in decreased prevalence of malnutrition in childhood and improved growth pattern of children, a fact that was observed recently in Brazil [2,3,4]. The obesity epidemic quickly spread to teenagers, school age children and recently to preschool children, mainly three years old [7]. As a result of early obesity onset several other health problems may arise in childhood, including hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems, which may impair quality of life and decrease life expectancy [8,9]
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