ESPE Abstracts

Background: Obesity is a disease which is associated with increased morbidity and mortality rate and needs extensive preventive procedures and effective interferences. Children with obese parent are in danger of becoming obese in their adolescence and adulthood even when trying to keep their weight stable.

Objective and hypotheses: We aimed to investigate whether parental obesity can trigger obesity in children or not.

Method: This is an analytic cross sectional study which was conducted on 12 years old students from different area in Rasht, north part of Iran. The checklist included demographic characteristics such as age, maternal age during childbirth, student and maternal height and weight, child rank. Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation analysis, paired t-test and ANOVA test and χ² in SPSS Software 19.0. A P-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Results: Results showed significant correlation between students’ BMI and parental BMI and father weight. (r=0.304, P<0.0001) (r=0.257, P<0.0001) (r=0.249, P<0.0001) (r=0.166, P=0.019). Also, there was significant correlation between students weight with parental BMI and father weight and birth rank.

Conclusion: This study shows that mother’s and father’s BMI and birth order are the factors that can predict children obesity and these variables could have major role in predicting 14.4% of high BMI cases. The role of family in changing nutritional habits of children must be considered, because through parental education and changing their perceptions we can prevent at least 14% of cases.