Prevalence of Obesity and its Relationship with Birth Weight among High School Female Students

Introduction: The idea that factors during early critical periods of life affect on long term health is now a major public health concern. In this study, in addition to investigating obesity prevalence among female high school students in Yazd, the relationship between obesity and birth weight was examined. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted among 312 students using random cluster sampling method.. According to the birth weight recorded on their growth cards, the students were divided to 3 weight groups of low birth weight ( < 2,500 g), fitting birth weight (between 2500 and 4000 g) and high birth weight ( > 4000 g). Anthropometric measurements including weight, height and waist circumference were also carried out. Based on NCHS standard values, BMI ?5th,, 5-85th, 85-95th , and ?95th percentiles were considered as underweight, normal, overweight, and obese, respectively. In addition, 95th percentile?for waist circumference was considered abdominal obesity. Finally, the data were analyzed by SPSS 16 software. Results: The mean of weight and BMI among participants were higher and the mean of their height was lower than 50th percentile of NCHS. Based on the results, 5.7% of the samples were underweight, 73.4% were normal, 17.1% were overweight and 3.8% were obese. Abdominal obesity rate was 18.7%. There was a significantly positive correlation between birth weight and current weight of the students (p= 0.001 and r= 0.2) and their BMI (p= 0.005 and r= 0.15). Conclusion: We observed rather high prevalence of obesity and overweight in this study. Moreover, the relationship between birth weight and current weight was positive which it necessitate preventive strategies and training for this group of people.