Özet:

Objectives. To assess the impact of obesity on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Mongolian and Caucasian adolescents living in rural areas of Buryatia, Russia. Materials and methods. The study included 77 overweight and obese adolescents aged 11–17 years from rural areas of Buryatia, Russia. Forty-six of them were Mongolians (13 were Soyots (minor ethnic group), 33 were Buryats) and 31 were Caucasians. To compare, we recruited seventy-three adolescents from the same community-based sample with normal weight, comparable with the overweight group in gender, age and race/ ethnos. Height, weight and waist circumference were objectively measured using standardized methods. BMI and waist circumference Z-scores were calculated using the age and sex specific reference. HRQoL was measured by the self-report version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0. Results. Being overweight was associated with poorer adolescent-reported HRQoL totals and in each domain in comparison with the control group of Caucasian adolescents (all р < 0.01), but not Mongolians. Subgroup analysis for overweight adolescents indicated that after controlling for gender, age, Tanner stage of adolescents, education and social status of their mothers, HRQoL scores were significantly lower in the Caucasians compared with the Mongolians regardless of BMI z-score in all domains. Moreover, abdominal obesity was independently associated with poorer scores in the domains of emotional (β = –0.26; р = 0.018), school (β = –0.23; р = 0.03) and psychosocial (β = –0.24; р = 0.028) functioning and total HRQoL scores  (β = –0.22; р = 0.04). Conclusion. In the rural community-based sample, overweight Caucasian adolescents have significantly poorer HRQoL than their non-overweight peers of the same race, and they have worse HRQoL than obese Mongolian adolescents with comparable anthropometric characteristics.When developing health improvement programs for adolescents from rural Buryatia, it should be considered that the improvement of quality of life may become a good motivation to lose weight for Caucasian adolescents but not for Mongolian adolescents.

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