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Najla I. Ayoub Rana F. Shitran Mushriq Abdullah Hussein Sabah M. Ali

Abstract

Background: Assessing growth is a beneficial way for defining the status of health and nutrition in children.


Objective: To construct growth references curves of healthy infants and children (0-6years) ,and compare them with previous and international references , and estimating prevalence of overweight and obesity among those infants and children, and to study some of the risk factors for the development of overweight and obesity.


Patient and methods:A Cross-sectional study of Healthy preschool children aged from birth to 6 years visiting the out-patients clinic of central teaching hospital of pediatric hospital for regular growth monitoring and who were having simple illness from the period of the first of February to the first of July 2014, the present study have excluded; children with chronic diseases, and/or those on any type of drugs e.g[ thyroxine ,growth hormone ,androgens , prolonged use of steroid], and preterm infants had been excluded.


Result: Of the participant children; 707 (76.3%) were younger than two years old, while 219 of those aged between (2 – 6 years) which constitute (23.7%) of the study sample , an overweight constitute about 79(11.2%) of children below 2 years with male to female ratio(1.1:1 ) and obesity constitute 22(3.1%) of them with male to female ratio(0.6:1) while in those 2-6 years the overweight children constitute 33(15.1%) with male to female ratio( 0.5:1) while obesity was prevalent in 21 (9.6%) of them with male to female ratio( 0.5:1 ).The prevalence of obesity and overweight for children below 2 years were 2.5% and 11.7% for boys, with3.7%, 10.6% for girls, and for those aged 2-6 years, 6.3% and 10.8% for boys and 13%, 19.4% for girls.


Conclusion: Percentile curves presented for body mass index represent a normal healthy and well-nourished child population are not different from WHO curves. It can be used to evaluate the status of adiposity especially in those who have positive family history of obesity and significantly less in exclusive breast fed babies and significantly more where there is less activity and more time for watching T.V. infants and children of both sexes which were evidenced in all age group and in both sexes.

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