Prevalence of overweight and its associated risk factors among adolescents: A cross-sectional study in peri-urban area of Nepal

Abstract

Background Adolescence, being a crucial stage for experimentation and acceptance of new behavioral and lifestyle choices, is detrimental to their nutritional status. The nutritional status of adolescents being shaped by socio-cultural, environmental, and economic factors has also been impacted by their food habits and level of physical activity. The current nutritional shift and rapid urbanization had emerged overweight as an additional burden for consistently prevalent undernutrition issues. So, the study aimed to identify the prevalence of and risk factors for overweight among school adolescents. Methods A school-based cross-sectional analytical study was carried out among school adolescents in a Sub-metropolitan city of Nepal. A random sample of 279 adolescents from nine schools was included in the study. The anthropometric measurement of the height and the weight were measured as per the standard. The odds ratio with a 95% CI was calculated and a p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered as cut off for statistical significance by fitting into the final multivariable logistic regression. Results The overall prevalence of overweight was obtained as 9.31% (95% CI: 6.40 − 13.3). The mean age of respondents was 15.5 years. The early aged adolescents were more overweight than compared to middle-aged adolescents (AOR: 0.27, CI: 0.028–2.67) and late adolescents (AOR: 0.66, CI: 0.068–6.44) respectively. Similarly, adolescents residing in rural areas had 0.35 (AOR = 0.33, CI: 0.030–3.71) odds of being overweight compared to their counterparts. Adolescents with sedentary behavior were 4 times (AOR = 3.51, CI: 0.79–15.54) more likely of being overweight than their counterparts. Conclusions Overweight among adolescents in urban areas has emerged as an alarming issue with the increasing burden. It is therefore pertinent to emphasize adolescents to improve healthy weight status.

Nutritional status of school‐age children (5–19 years) in South Asia: A scoping review

“…Twenty‐one studies explored differences between rural and urban areas and the majority of them (16 studies) (Bellundagi et al, 2022; Bhargava et al, 2016; Biswas et al, 2017; Chakraborty et al, 2018; Ganie et al, 2017; Goonapienuwala et al, 2022; Harding et al, 2019; Hombaiah et al, 2021; Islam et al, 2020; Khan et al, 2022; Khatri et al, 2021; Mohan et al, 2019; Pandurangi et al, 2022; Prasad et al, 2016; Yadav et al, 2018; Young et al, 2020) found a higher prevalence of overweight and/or obesity in urban areas. Differences in overweight/obesity prevalence for males and females were inconsistent across studies; however, a pooled analysis combining 2416 population‐based measurements found that BMI was higher among girls compared to boys in South Asia (NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD‐RisC), 2017).…”