Prevalence and Determinant of Obesity Amongst School Going Adolescent of Assam

Abstract

BACKGROUNDThe risk factors of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in India are increasing at an alarming rate for the last few decades. Obesity is one major risk factor of CVD which start very early in life, hence there is a need to determine prevalence and risk factor of obesity among younger age group so as to plan preventive strategies. MATERIALS AND METHODSA cluster sample with cluster size of 50 was taken from 16 schools to cover sample size of 800 with consideration of design effect. Socio-demographic, environmental, dietary, and anthropometric and laboratory risk factors were assessed in the studied population. RESULTSObesity was prevalent in 5%, while overweight in 10%. Overweight and obesity was found to be more amongst students having educated parents (p<0.05). Strong association was seen amongst tobacco product users with overweight (p=0.000) and obesity (p=0.001), secondhand smoke exposures and depression (p<0.05), alcohol consumption, less fruit intake (weekly) (p<0.05), frequent animal food product consumer with both overweight (p=0.007) and obesity (p=0.008). Maximum obese (2.0%) students were daily consumer of sweet snacks (p=0.030). Overweight and obesity were strongly associated with number of meals served per day (p<0.05). Significant mean difference of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and waist circumference between overweight and non-overweight and obese and non obese was seen. Second hand smoke exposure was associated with a statistically significant risk of overweight (OR=3.30, 95% CI = 1.754-6.210, p<0.05). Also hypertension was significantly associated with overweight and obesity with (OR=.30, 95% CI = 0.175-0.522, p<0.05) and (OR=0.25, 95% CI = 0.126-0.513, p<0.05) respectively. CONCLUSIONThere is a need to reduce the risk factor prevalence of CVD to address the future epidemic of non communicable disease amongst this group of population. Different health promotional activities can be implemented with implementation research for better evidence generation beginning at an early age. Since students spend most of their time in the school environment, so schools should promote positive health behaviour.