Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Like many other hospitals nurses work either on irregular shifts or on regular basis in our centre. Also their education levels differ among them. In this study we aimed to analyse some factors which may affect the children of female nurses’ adiposity.

Subjects and methods: We included 100 children of female nurses on duty in our hospital. The ages ranged between 2 months and 17 years.

Results: According to standard BMI percentiles, 13 (13%) were underweight, 53 were normal weight (53%), 14 were overweight (14%) and 20 were obese (20%). Fifty seven were the first child (57%), 38 (38%) were the second and 5 (5%) were the third child. Sixty-eight children were born normally and 32 by caesarean section. Mothers of 42 children were working on regular basis compared with 58 working on irregular shifts. Out of the mothers of 13 underweight children 12 were working on irregular shifts and one on regular basis. Similarly out of the mothers of 20 obese children 12 were working on regular basis compared to eight on irregular shifts. These findings were statistically significant (P=0.016). Children’s adiposity were also positively associated with snack habits (P=0.003). There was no association between children’s adiposity and mothers’ education level, fathers education level, fathers working status, duration of breast feeding, birth weight, children’s gender, birth order, time of consumption of additional food and type of birth.

Conclusion: The main finding in our study was that underweight children were from mothers working on irregular shifts and that obese children were from mothers working on a regular basis. This could be attributed to irregular working hours leading to irregular and possibly insufficient family feeding. The mother is generally not with the child at feeding hours. These findings need to be clarified in larger scale studies.