Nayera E. Hassan¹, Sahar A. El-Masry^1*, Tarek Farid², Aya Khalil¹

¹Biological Anthropology Department, Cairo, Egypt; ²Pediatric Department, Medical Research Division, National Research Centre, Cairo, Egypt (Affiliation ID 60014618)

BACKGROUND: Overweight/obesity is a multi-factorial problem, which results from rapidly changing social, economic, and physical environments that have led to an energy imbalance.
AIM: To identify the association between childhood overweight/obesity and some socio-demographic risk factors, as parental age, body mass index (BMI), education and occupation, family size and residence (urban/rural).

SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional study included 154 children of both sexes; aged 5-18 years; with their parents; one of them was working at the National Research Centre and from their relatives and neighbours. Data was collected about the child birth weight, family size, parental ages, education, occupation and place of residence. Anthropometric measurements including weight, height, and body mass index (BMI) of children and their parents were conducted.

RESULTS: Obesity was detected among 19.5% of children (BMI > 95th percentile), 75.3% of their mothers and 49.6% of their fathers (BMI > 30 Kg/m^2). While overweight was present in 11.0% of the children (BMI > 85th- <95 percentile), 16.9% of their mothers and 36.5% of their fathers (BMI > 25-29.9 Kg/m^2). Child obesity was more prominent in urban than rural areas (21.3% versus 12.5%) and among housewives (22.8%) than among working mothers (16%, p < 0.016). Child overweight was more common in rural than urban areas (12.5% versus 10.7%) and among children with high father education (20%). Child BMI had significant positive correlations only with the child age, parental ages and BMIs, and family size. In spite of that, parental BMIs had significant positive correlations with each other and with family size, and significant negative correlations with maternal education and occupation and paternal education.

CONCLUSION: Childhood obesity and overweight were more prominent in urban than rural areas, among children with non-working housewives mothers and highly educated fathers (college or above). Parental education and occupation had an indirect significant effect on child BMI through their significant effect on parental BMIs.
 

Citation: Hassan NE, El-Masry SA, Farid T, Khalil A. Influence of Parental and Some Demographic Characteristics on Overweight/Obesity Status among a Sample of Egyptian Children. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. http://dx.doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2016.088
Keywords: Obesity; overweight; children; parental factors; residence.
*Correspondence: Sahar Abd El-Raufe El-Masry. Biological Anthropology Dept., National Research Centre, El-Bohooth St., Dokki, Giza, Cairo 12622, Egypt. Tel: +2 0106606640. E- mail: masrysa@yahoo.com
Received: 28-Jun-2016; Revised: 27-Jul-2016; Accepted: 28-Jul-2016; Online first: 27-Aug-2016
Copyright: © 2016 Nayera E. Hassan, Sahar A. El-Masry, Tarek Farid, Aya Khalil. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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