Duel Burden of Underweight and Overweight among Likely to Conceive Women of Rural North Karnataka: Prevalence and Its Social-Demographic Determinants-Baseline Result of DBW Cohort Study

The duel burden of malnutrition is characterized by the coexistence of under-nutrition along with overweight, obesity or diet-related NCDs, within individuals, households and populations, and across the life-course. Hence a study carried out to identify the prevalence of underweight and overweight among likely to conceive women and its determinants.

Determinants of Birth Weight (DBW): a community based prospective cohort study at rural North Karnataka collected information from 1293 likely to conceive women on pretested interview schedule. Nutrition status of women was graded based on WHO international BMI categories. Chi Square test and multinomial logistic regression were applied to identify the determinants of underweight and overweight with the 95% confidence interval with P values less than 0.05.

The prevalence of underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity was found 35.1%, 52.4%, 9.7% and 2.7% respectively with mean±SD BMI 20.4 kg/m²±3.876 kg/m². The determinants of duel burden of underweight and overweight found in the study were current age of women, age at menarche, family type and education level of women and p value less than 0.05.

Younger age group women, women from joint family and women with lower education level are more likely to suffer from both underweight and overweight in North Karnataka.