Abstract

Objetive: This study verifies the importance of sexual maturation on nutritional assessment based on body mass index (BMI). Methods: Data were collected from patient’ s medical records at a primary health care service in a low income community - Health Outreach Clinic for Adolescents in the Macaco’ s Community - Vila Isabel in Rio de Janeiro from 1990 to 1997. The eligible population was 792 adolescents, ages 10 to 20 and no data was available on sexual maturation or weight for 326. However, adolescents without information on sexual maturation had the same distribution in relation to sex, age and medical condition that the study population. Adolescents were classified as underweight or overweight based on two classifications: One proposed by Sichieri & Allam (1996) using as a cutoff point the 10th and the 90th percentile of the Brazilian BMI distribution, respectively. The other classification was based on WHO recommendations. Results: There was no difference in the overweight prevalence using both classifications. It was 10% in males and 11,9% in females, whereas the prevalence of undernutrition was 46% in males and 31,7% in females. Short stature (10th percentile according to American population) was 29,2% in young males and 20,2% in young females, with reduction of these prevalence with increasing age.Conclusions: Taken together, this data show the importance of sexual maturation in the assessment by BMI.