Resumo

RODRIGUEZ VARGAS, Nuris et al. Obesity in the schoolchild with a history of macrosomy or high birthweight. Rev Cubana Invest Bioméd [online]. 2009, vol.28, n.2. ISSN 0864-0300.

Obesity is a chronic, multifactoral and complex disease that develops from the interaction of the genotype and the environment, and is rooted in social, cultural, behavioral, physiological, histobiological and genetic factors. With the purpose of identifying obesity as one of the atherosclerotic risk factors that may be observed from the very childhood, a case-control descriptive study was carried out in children who were born from January 1992 to December 1995 in "Ramón Gonzales Coro" hospital. This research work was conducted in two groups, one called "the macrosomic group" composed of 140 children with high birth weight (4 000 grams or over) and the other called "the control group" made up of 100 normoweighted children at birth. The sample was characterized by sex and age. The current nutritional status of either a boy or a girl was evaluated based on weight-size ratio. It was found that highly significant differences between average weights of the study group and the control group at birth existed, but the same was not valid for the body mass indexes of both groups, according to the statistical data. However, in this study, the number of malnourished school children due to overfeeding was high in both groups, but not predominant. It may be concluded that high birthweight is not a predictive factor for obesity.

Palavras-chave : Obesity; macrosomy; Cuba.