ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Adequate nutritional status of adolescents is essential for their healthy development, with health repercussions in both short-term and adult life.

Objective: To analyze the temporal trends of the BMI of Brazilian adolescents (10 to 19 years old) between 2010 and 2022.

Patients and methods: Descriptive ecological study. Data obtained from e-SUS Primary Care. The BMI categories evaluated were: severe thinness (ST), thinness (T), eutrophy (E), overweight (OW), obesity (OB), and severe obesity (SOB). The prevalence rate, the annual percentage changes (APCs), and its trend were calculated by segmented linear regression. Time series analysis performed in Joinpoint version 4.9.

Results: On average, 4.5 million adolescents were assessed each year of the historical series. In the analyzed period, their BMI showed an increasing character in "T," "OB," and "SOB" (APC:1.52; P=0.002; APC:8.44; P=<0.001 and APC:11.5; P=<0.001, respectively), while "E" presented a decreasing character (APC:1.67; P=<0.001). "ST" showed an increasing character in the Midwest region until 2014 (APC:7.9; P=0.024), changing its nature to a decreasing one between 2014 and 2018 (APC: -10.82; P=0.013) and stationary since then (APC:1.66; P=0.408). Regarding the macro-regions, “OW” showed an increasing character in the North (APC:2.86; P=<0.001) and Southeast (APC:4.14; P=0.003) in the periods from 2010 to 2015 and between 2015 and 2022.

Discussion: The increasing character of "T," "O," and "SOB" in Brazil point to the increase of the extremes of nutritional status since it is possible to observe the simultaneous growth of "obesity" and "thinness" in the country. These data point to inadequate nutrition in this population, either due to the offer of foods with low nutritional value, the increased consumption of ultra-processed foods added to a sedentary lifestyle, or socioeconomic factors, which make it impossible to access a diet with good nutritional value. Thus, it is possible to observe an increase in the healthy vulnerability of this population.

Conclusion: There was a simultaneous increase in adolescents with "T," "O," and "SOB" in Brazil, while the number of "E" adolescents decreased. In the North and Southeast regions, it was also possible to observe an increase in "OW" adolescents. Brazilian Public Health Service should use the BMI trends to guide effective policies for the adolescent population.