No abstract

Temporal changes in BMI from age 3 years to 6 years are significantly associated with both environmental and behavioral factors at age 6 years. The results of this study may be useful for health promotion programs designed to prevent obesity during the early stages of childhood.

SSS is associated with prevalence of several health complaints in the Swedish working population over and above conventional SES, indicating that SSS is a valid measure of social inequality in health.

Obesity in children seems to be a risk factor for chronic diseases in adulthood. From the viewpoint of preventive medicine, factors influencing the development of obese children should be removed early in life.The purpose of this study was to the elucidate relationship between obesity in 3-year-old children and both behavioral and environmental factors by conducting a casecontrol study. Subjects were selected from the Toyama study. Matched-pair comparisons were performed between obese children whose Kaup's index was 18 or more (N=117) and control children (N=234) . Multivariate stepwised logistic regression analysis also applied to assess influence of confounding factors.The results indicated that the following 6 factors significantly influenced the development of obese 3-year-old children in exact Fisher's method analysis (p<0.05): person other than the mother responsible for taking care of the child, short sleep duration (9 hours or less), physical inactivity; eating snacks irregularly, overweight father (BMI_>24), and overweight mother (BMI_24). For both sexes, after adjusting for confounders by multivariate stepwise logistic analysis, overweight mother (OR 2.54, 95 % CI 1.64-3.95), birth overweight (birth weight_.>_>3,500g; OR 1.76, 95 %CI 1.15-2.69), the mother not responsible for taking care of the child (OR 1.65, 95 %CI 1.10-2.48), overweight father (OR 1.62, 95 %CI 1.09-2.40), eating snacks irregularly (OR 1.56, 95 %CI 1.04-2.33), and gender (female;OR 0.51, 95 % CI 0.34-0.77) had significant relationships with obesity in childhood. For boys, overweight mother (OR 2.53, 95 % CI 1.47-4.35), birth overweight (OR 2.03, 95 % CI 1.22-3.39), eating snacks irregularly (OR 1.94,, and birth month (36-41 months; OR 0.47, 95 %CI 0.23-0.96) had significant relationships. For girls, overweight mother (OR 2.62, 1.28-5.35), and short sleep duration (OR 2.24, 1.11-4.52) had significant relationships. In neither Fisher's exact method nor multivariate logistic models, time to wake up, bedtime, duration of playing outdoors, regularity of meals, care about salty food, or frequency of eating snacks had significant relations with obesity in 3-year-old children (p>0.05).