Association between abdominal obesity, screen time and sleep in adolescents

Objective: To assess the association between abdominal obesity, food intake, sleep deprivation, and screen time in adolescents. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted with 432 adolescents aged 14-19 years, from public and private schools. Anthropometric and body composition measures included body weight, waist circumference, body mass index for age, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio, and body fat percentage. Abdominal obesity was defined by age and sex specific cut-off points for waist circumference. Food intake, screen time, sexual maturation, and sleep duration were evaluated by self-administered questionnaires. Results: The prevalence of excess body weight and abdominal obesity was 16.7% and 27.5%, respectively. Students in the adult phase (post-puberty), with inadequate waist-to-height ratio, high body fat percentage, and screen time > 3 h/day were, respectively, 2.5 (95% CI 1.40-4.46), 7.44 (95% CI 1.08-51.46), 2.79 (95% CI 1.04-7.50), and 1.43 (95% CI 1.24-3.89) more likely to have abdominal obesity. Low intake of unprocessed or minimally processed foods was associated with inadequate sleep duration, while high intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with high screen time.Conclusions: Abdominal obesity was associated with the adult phase, short sleep duration and high screen time. The degree of food processing was associated with screen time and sleep dura-tion. Assessing the risk factors of abdominal obesity may be a useful strategy for preventing car-diovascular disease in adolescents.(c) 2022 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).