Overweight in adolescents: a possible association between sleep quality and eating behavior according to sex

Introduction: Obesity is a multifactorial disease affecting adolescent sleep quality and binge eating. Objective: to analyze adolescents' sleep quality and pos-sible binge eating according to sex and nutritional status.Methods: 108 adolescents (n = 51 male and n = 57 fe-male) aged between 10 to 18 years were recruited. Body composition was assessed by bioelectrical impedance, in which the following variables were collected: body weight, body fat percentage, and resting metabolic rate. The Z-score was calculated and classified by height and weight as eu-trophic and overweight. Subsequently, the adolescents an-swered the Brazilian version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire and the binge eating -Periodic Eating Compulsion Scale (BES) questionnaire to assess possi-ble periodic eating compulsion.Results: In the anthropometric analysis, male adolescents showed greater height (p<0.0001), body weight (p<0.05), resting metabolic rate (p<0.0001), total body water (p<0.0001), lean mass (p<0.0001), fat-free mass (p<0.0001) and skeletal muscle mass (p= 0.01) compared to female ado-lescents. However, female adolescents had a higher body fat percentage when compared to male adolescents (p= 0.01). In addition, overweight adolescents of both sexes had higher BES scores compared to eutrophic ones (p<0.05), with higher scores for females compared to males (p<0.05). However, no differences were observed between overweight and eutrophic individuals of both sexes for PQSI (p>0.05).Conclusion: Binge eating was identified in both sexes and may be related to poor sleep quality.