title: Secular trends of obesity prevalence in Chinese children from 1985 to 2010: Urban-rural disparity.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the trend of urban-rural disparity in obesity prevalence among Chinese children from 1985 to 2010.
  
  
  METHODS
  The data were from five cross-sectional surveys (1985, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010) of Chinese National Surveys on Students' Constitution and Health. Logistic regression was used to estimate the prevalence odds ratio (POR) of urban-rural areas for obesity prevalence in different surveys.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The standardized prevalence of obesity in Chinese children increased rapidly from 0.1% in 1985 to 5.0% in 2010, and significant differences were found between two adjacent surveys in most of the age subgroups (P<0.01). Although the obesity prevalence was significantly higher in urban than in rural children of all age subgroups at different survey points, the changing pace was faster in rural than in urban areas from 1995 to 2010. The PORs had increased in 1995 in most age subgroups and then began to decline in all age subgroups after 1995.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The gradually decreasing urban-rural disparity suggests that the obesity prevalence in rural areas would contribute to a growing proportion of obese children. Therefore, rural children should be included in obesity prevention efforts even though obesity rates are still lower in rural than in urban areas.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, China; Division of Social Medicine and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Hai-Jun
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhiqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Peijin
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Anette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Agard
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012424:Rural Population; D014505:Urban Population