Prevalence of obesity and central obesity among adolescent girls in a district school in Bangladesh

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased over the last two decades. Obesity is a major risk factor for chronic diseases and plays a central role in insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome. METHODS: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity by means of body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) in adolescent girls in a district school in Bangladesh. Based on age and sex specific BMI percentiles, the students were classified as normal weight (5(th)–<85(th) percentile), overweight (85(th)–<95(th) percentiles), and obese (≥95(th) percentile). Central obesity was categorized as WHtR ≥ 0.5. Adolescent girls (aged 9–17 years) attending the sixth to twelfth grades (n = 501) in a Bengali medium school participated in the study. RESULTS: The prevalence of obesity and overweight were 23% and 14% among the girls. The prevalence of central obesity was 26%. Around 14% of girls in the normal weight group were centrally obese. There was a significant relationship between WHtR and BMI status (P = 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Our study provides evidence showing a high prevalence of overall and central obesity in adolescent girls in our population. We emphasize the need for further large scale surveillance programs and preventive strategies in our population to reduce the incidence of obesity.