NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Economic prosperity has fueled a sharp rise in the percentage of overweight children and adolescents around the world, researchers report.

Their study documents a near doubling in the rate of overweight among US 6- to 18-year-olds between 1971 and 1997. At the same time, the percentage of overweight children and teens tripled in Brazil and rose by 20% in China.

Russia, which has suffered hard economic times since the breakup of the Soviet Union over the past decade, saw a roughly 50% reduction in the percentage of children and teens who are overweight, according to the report in the June issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The findings are based on data from four countries representing about one third of the world's population and highlight a troubling global trend, as excess weight is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The study findings also suggest that developing countries need to re-think their feeding programs, which for years have focused on under-nutrition.

But the recent global economic boom, combined with improvements in transportation, more leisure time and sedentary lifestyles, seems to have reversed the trend. Television ownership, which increased in the countries where rates of overweight rose, may have contributed.

"Television watching is a major cause of children's inactivity and has been linked to childhood obesity," Dr. Youfa Wang and colleagues explain.

The researchers estimated the prevalence of overweight in nationally representative groups of older children and teenagers in four countries.

In the US, more than 25% of children and adolescents met the criteria for overweight in 1994 compared with nearly 15% in 1974.

About 14% of children in Brazil were overweight in 1997 compared with 4% in 1975, and 7.7% of kids were overweight in China in 1997, compared with 6.4% in 1991, according to the study findings.

"These trends pose many critical public health challenges in the new millennium," the authors conclude. "These changes are particularly challenging for countries facing shifts from under- to over-nutrition problems; it is highly recommended that they adjust their national efforts in the food and nutrition area to consider these new realities."

In Russia, the percentage of overweight children and teenagers declined to 9% in 1998 from 15.6% in 1992. The rate of children and adolescents deemed underweight rose to 8% from about 7% over the same period.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2002;75.

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