ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: The good nutritional status of children in the first years of life is essential for their healthy growth and development. Evaluating the repercussions of nutritional status is fundamental since nutrition can influence both short-term and adult life.

Objective: To analyze the temporal trends of the BMI of Brazilian children aged 0 to 5 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 risk (OR), 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: In the whole country, we observed that the BMI of children under five years of age had an increasing character for "E" (APC:0.58; P=<0.001), while "ST" and "OB" showed a decreasing character (APC: -3.77; P=<0.001 and APC: -2.04; P=0.005, respectively). In the Northeast region, "ST" showed an increasing character until 2018 (APC: -5.4; P=<0.001) and a stationary tendency since then. In the Southeast region, "E" was stationary between 2010 and 2013 and increased since then (APC:0.98; P=<0.001), while "T" was stationary until 2018 (APC: -1.06; P=0.108) and increased between 2018 and 2022 (APC:4.87; P=0.012).

Discussion: The improvement in nutritional diagnosis, demonstrated by the reduction of "ST" and "OB" and the increase of "E" in Brazil, suggests an improvement in the quality of life and food supply for children under five years of age. This improvement may indicate the success of implementing public policies and healthcare measures. On the other hand, the analysis by macro-region shows the growing character of "ST" in the Northeast and of "T" in the South, highlighting the essential regional disparities in our country due to economic factors or even bias of health access.

Conclusion: The increasing character in the "E" category and a decreasing character in "ST" and "O" throughout the analyzed period indicates an improvement in the nutritional status of children under five years of age. Nevertheless, the rise in "T" and "ST" in the South and Northeast regions highlights the need for specific intervention in those regions.