The number of American children, adolescents and adult men who are overweight or obese continues to rise, according to the latest figures, while the number of overweight or obese women seems to be leveling off.

The percentage of obese adults in the US doubled between 1980 and 2002, and the risk of being overweight tripled among children aged 6 to 19, Dr. Cynthia Ogden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Hyattsville, Maryland and colleagues report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. To investigate whether this trend was continuing, they analyzed data from a representative sample of nearly 8,400 US children and adults for 2003-2004.

They found that 18.2 percent of Americans aged 2 to 19 were overweight in 2003-2004, compared to 14 percent in 1999-2000. The prevalence of overweight or obesity among men 20 and older rose from 67.2 percent to 70.6 percent during the same time period, while the prevalence of obesity climbed from 27.5 percent to 31.1 percent.

“I think it’s concerning, particularly among children, to see an increase in such a short time period,” Ogden told Reuters Health.

But the percentage of US women who were overweight or obese held steady at about 62 percent. The rate of obesity among adult females also remained the same at about 33 percent. These data provide “some potentially good news that it may be stabilizing in women,” Ogden said, but “we need a little bit more data to confirm that. Still, a third of American women remain obese.”

Ogden and her colleagues identified significant ethnic differences in overweight and obesity for women, children and teens, but not for men. For example, nearly 58 percent of non-Hispanic black women aged 40 to 59 were obese, compared to 28 percent non-Hispanic white females in the same age group.

Mexican-American boys and male teens were at greater risk of overweight than non-Hispanic whites, while overweight was more common among Mexican-American and non-Hispanic black girls compared to non-Hispanic white girls.

The researchers also found that adolescents were more likely to be overweight than younger children.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, April 5, 2006.