title: Trajectories of weight disturbances during adolescence in relation to gender in a Swedish cohort.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To explore developmental trajectories among adolescents of thinness and overweight in relation to gender.
  
  
  METHODS
  A group-based procedure was used to determine patterns of weight disturbances in a school-based sample of 3020 Swedish adolescents followed from age 11 to 18. A sensitivity analysis was performed to compensate for an increasing number of missing height and weight data after grade 8.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Six trajectories represented the best description of developmental weight disturbances with the exception of thinness among boys, which was best described by four trajectories. Concerning thinness, 5.9% of girls and 4.2% of boys developed this condition during the study period, while 1.9% of girls and 3.0% of boys recovered from their initial thinness. For overweight, (including obesity) 1.5% of girls and 3.1% of boys developed this weight disturbance during the study period, while 10.1% of girls and 9.3% of boys recovered from overweight/obesity. Non-reporting of height and weight was biased towards an underestimation of the true prevalence of overweight and obesity in girls and of thinness in boys.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Developmental trajectories provide a novel method to describe the dynamics of weight disturbances during adolescence. Similar patterns were found for overweight and thinness in boys and girls but group sizes varied between genders. Non-reporting of height and weight was found in a gender-specific pattern.
authors: Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. ingvar.rosendahl@ki.se
authors: K Ingvar
authors: KI
authors: Rosendahl
authors: Elinor
authors: E
authors: Sundblom
authors: Liselotte Schäfer
authors: LS
authors: Elinder
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D050177:Overweight / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology; D013851:Thinness / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015430:Weight Gain; D015431:Weight Loss