Health-related quality of life and childhood obesity

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of obese children 5 through 13 years of age. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate HRQOL among obese (BMI 95th-99th percentile) and severely obese (BMI ≥99th percentile) children aged 5 through 13 years from the perspective of both affected children and their parents. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 47 obese and 75 severely obese children entering an obesity-intervention program. HRQOL was measured with the Sizing Me Up – Child Report and the Sizing Them Up – Parent-Proxy Version. RESULTS: For both child-report and parent-proxy measures severely obese children had clinically significant lower global HRQOL than obese children (65 vs. 73, p = 0.001 and 70 vs. 77, p=0.02). For child-report measures the severely obese children had lower scores on the subdomains related to emotional functioning (65 vs. 77, p=0.01), physical functioning (72 vs. 86, p