پزشکی بالینی ابن سینا (Sep 2000)
Prevalence of Obesity in Hamadan Primary-Schools’ Students in 1998
Abstract
Obesity status is unknown among Hamadan primary-school students. The main objective of this study is to determine its’ prevalence in the study population. This study was conducted on two thousand school children of Hamadan city, Iran. A sample of 2000 children aged 6 - 11 years was surveyed (1000 boys and 1000 girls ). The weight (kg) was taken by a standardized weighting scale while height was measured using a Plastic-band. For diagnosis of obesity, NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics) standard method was used. The children’s which were among the 90 & 95 percentiles were assigned as obese and those who were up the 95 percentile were considered as very obese. The results showed that 3.5% percent of children were obese and 2.55% were very obese. The prevalence of obesity was higher in females compared to males(7.2% VS 4% ).The difference was statistically significant (P<0.01). The figures were compared to those of the United States of America and European countries. It can be concluded that obesity is not a major problem in the surveyed population , While , the percent of lean peoples (10.2%) in these cases was higher than the obese peoples.
