Introduction:

Overweight and obesity in childhood are health problems due to their consequences in later periods of life.

Objective:

To determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity and their association with risk factors in school-age children.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study that included 125 children aged 5 to 10 years from three family doctor’s offices in Havana. The nutritional status was classified according to the percentiles of body mass index of the Cuban tables for growth and development. It was considered overweight as: body mass index between 90 and 97 percentile, and obese: above the 97 percentile. The response variable was the nutritional status of the child and the risk factors were: nutrition and maternal smoking habit, gestational diabetes, birth weight and breastfeeding. The data were obtained through an interview to the mother, the revision of clinical records and physical examination to the child.

Results:

The 14.4% of schoolchildren presented overweight and 16.8% obesity. The risk factors that showed a greater association with overweight and obesity were the maternal overweight (p= 0.01), and birth weight higher than 3500 grams. The history of not having received exclusive breastfeeding was more frequently in overweight children.

Conclusions:

The results demonstrated the influence of prenatal factors such as maternal nutrition, birth weight and the absence of exclusive breastfeeding in the presence of overweight and obesity in school-age children.

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