Original articleObesity in Swedish Schoolchildren is Increasing in Both Prevalence and Severity
Section snippets
What kind of knowledge is missing?
Repeated comparable surveys of a whole country with longitudinal data that makes it possible to reveal changing patterns of overweight and obesity from age 7 years to 18 years, with minimal selection bias.
Material and Methods
From two target populations, all born in 1973 and 1981 and living in Sweden as of 31 December 1989, two study populations were sampled, including all individuals born on the 15th of any month. Data for these two samples were collected from school health records from all of Sweden, where trained nurses had taken all measurements. Table 1 presents the study populations, data sources, and sample sizes.
The study population for the 1973 cohort consists of 3,749 children, and the number of missing
Results
Table 2 presents the cross-sectionally based comparison of the 1973 and 1981 cohorts.
Discussion
Comparing BMI figures for two nationally representative samples of children born in 1973 and 1981 revealed a positive secular change at all ages. Over 8 years, the prevalence of both overweight and obesity increased, and obesity has grown more severe among both boys and girls. A notable feature is that the mean BMI achieved at one age in the 1973 cohort is generally achieved 1 year earlier in the 1981 cohort. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time, except in the case of examples
Conclusion
To monitor changes in growth patterns among children and adolescents in a large population, it is important to have data that are representative; in this study we have achieved representativity in many basic respects. We can conclude that there is a marked positive change in BMI among both boys and girls from age 7 to 18 years; furthermore, a visible positive secular change in the height of both boys and girls is still evident in Sweden. In the same two cohorts, we earlier found a time change
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