[Overweight among young people in a city in the Brazilian semiarid region: a population-based study].

The scope of this article is to measure the prevalence and identify factors associated with excess weight among young people living in the city of Caracol, Piaui, Brazil. Qualified interviewers applied a standardized questionnaire and assessed the anthropometric measurements of all young people (13 to 19 years of age) in their households. The questionnaires sought information on demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics. The outcome was overweight in young people (BMI > 1 z score) calculated on the basis of body mass index (BMI) and classified in accordance with the new parameters of the World Health Organization. Poisson regression with robust adjustment of variance was used for the statistical analysis. Of the 1,088 young people studied, 10.5% were overweight. The occurrence of the outcome varied from 6% for young people belonging to the second income quartile to 19% for adolescents with a height deficit for their age. Even with the prevalence of overweight being below the national average in the semiarid region, the factors associated with their occurrence are already equal to the other areas of Brazil and there is a pressing need for early intervention aimed at preventing and reducing the current overweight levels.