Is There Any Association between TV Viewing and Obesity in Preschool Children in Japan?
Obesity in children is a serious public health problem, and TV viewing is considered a potential risk factor. Since, however, no relevant association studies have been conducted in Japan, we evaluated the association between TV viewing and obesity using a population-based study conducted in a Japanese town. All 616 preschool children in the town were enrolled in February 2008, and a self-administered questionnaire to collect children's and parents' characteristics was sent to the parents. We dichotomized the time spent TV viewing and evaluated associations by logistic regression using a "less than 2h" category as a reference. The questionnaire was collected from 476 participants (77.3%), of whom 449 were available for the final analyses. Among them, 26.9% of preschool children reported 2 or more hours of TV viewing per day and 8.2% were defined as obese. In logistic regression analyses, there was no positive association in unadjusted (odds ratio [OR] = 1.11, 95% confidence interval [95% CI]:0.50-2.49) or adjusted models for exclusively breastfed status, sleep duration, or maternal factors (OR = 1.11, 95% CI:0.50-2.51). We also found no positive association between TV viewing and overweight status, possibly owing to the influence of social environment, low statistical power, or misclassification.
Sasaki
Ayako
A
Department of Epidemiology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama 700-8558, Japan. happytwill0710@yahoo.co.jp
Yorifuji
Takashi
T
Iwase
Toshihide
T
Komatsu
Hirokazu
H
Takao
Soshi
S
Doi
Hiroyuki
H
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000209:etiology*; D013690:Television