Risk factors of overweight/obesity in Chinese child aged 7-18: a meta-analysis

Objective To explore risk factors of overweight/obesity in Chinese children aged 7 to 18 years and to provide references for intervention on overweight/obesity among the children.Methods A systematic search for literatures on risk factors of overweight/obesity in Chinese children aged 7-18 years published from January 2003 to April 2016 was conducted throuhg seven electronic databases (including China Biological Medicine,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,Chongqing VIP Database,WanFang Database,Pubmed,Medline,and Excerpta Medica Database) and the search was supplemented with manual retrieval.A meta-analysis was performed adopting RevMan 4.4.2.Results Totally 23 studies (13 published in Chinese and 10 in English) involving 126 563 participants (22 909 cases and 103654 controls) were included in the analysis.The results revealed that male gender (odds ratioOR=1.92,95% confidence interval95%CI=1.69-2.18),residing in urban area (OR=1.68,95%CI=1.28-2.21),with a birth weight higher than 4 kilograms (OR=1.98,95%CI=1.31-2.99),maternal overweight (OR=2.28,95%CI=1.82-2.84),paternal overweight (OR=1.84,95%Cl=1.61,2.10),having sedentary behavior of longer than one hour perday (OR=1.55,95%CI=1.30-1.85),and inadequate sleep duration (OR=1.47,95%CI=1.27-1.69)were associated with overweight/obesity among the children.Sensitivity analysis and bias estimation showed no publication bias for the studies included and the results were reliable.Conclusion Being a boy,residing in urban area,having an overweight father and/or mother,sedentary behavior,and inadequate sleep duration are main influencing factors of overweight and obesity among Chinese children aged 7 to 18 years.