BMC Public Health 2009, 9:1 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/1 Table 2: Characteristics of participants in the SUN study according to sex. Sex Male Body image disturbance Under estimated n = 2,397 Over estimated n = 96 Female Body image disturbance Under estimated n = 2,145 Over estimated n = 169 Depression (n, %) Age [years] (mean, SD)a Body mass index [Kg/m2] (n, %)a Underweight Overweight Obese Weight change in the past five years [Kg] (n, %)b Lost Gain Marital status (n; %)c Unmarried Married Other Smoking (n, %)b Current smoker Past smoker Physical activity [METs-h/week] (mean, SD)b Energy intake [Kcal/day] (mean, SD) Alcohol consumption [g/day] (mean, SD)c Working hours (n, %)c < 35 hours/week >= 35 hours/week Unemployed Chronic disease at baseline (n, %) Cardiovascular Cancer None n = 1,875 78 (4.2) 42.2 (13.0) 58 (3.1) 682 (36.4) 35 (1.9) 330 (17.6) 1,064 (56.7) 634 (34.0) 1,171 (62.9) 58 (3.1) 373 (20.6) 633 (34.9) 26.8 (23.7) 2,448.9 (668.0) 10.9 (14.4) 196 (10.6) 1,521 (82.1) 135 (7.3) 128 (6.8) 53 (2.8) 82 (3.5) 41.7 (12.4) 0 (0.0) 1202 (50.1) 302 (12.6) 460 (19.2) 1,218 (50.8) 804 (33.8) 1,495 (62.8) 81 (3.4) 469 (20.3) 772 (33.3) 29.6 (27.0) 10.4 (12.6) 230 (9.7) 1,978 (83.5) 160 (6.8) 148 (6.2) 65 (2.7) 1 (1.0) 47.4 (14.8) 4 (4.2) 4 (4.2) 0 (0.0) 13 (13.5) 62 (64.6) 29 (30.5) 66 (69.5) 0 (0.0) 17 (17.9) 38 (40.0) 21.5 (19.6) 10 (10.5) 74 (77.9) 11 (11.6) 9 (9.4) 6 (6.3) None n = 3,604 218 (6.0) 34.1 (10.1) 1,259 (34.9) 124 (3.4) 14 (0.4) 999 (27.7) 1,532 (42.5) 1,968 (55.0) 1,490 (41.6) 122 (3.4) 911 (26.1) 833 (23.9) 21.7 (18.6) 734 (20.6) 2,287 (64.3) 534 (15.0) 100 (2.8) 115 (3.2) 108 (5.0) 35.5 (10.4) 0 (0.0) 529 (24.7) 101 (4.7) 608 (28.3) 905 (42.2) 1,055 (49.6) 972 (45.7) 99 (4.7) 485 (23.3) 535 (25.7) 21.6 (18.0) 442 (20.8) 1,412 (66.5) 269 (12.7) 73 (3.4) 87 (4.1) 10 (5.9) 31.2 (9.1) 148 (87.6) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 56 (33.1) 68 (40.2) 107 (64.1) 52 (31.1) 8 (4.8) 41 (25.2) 36 (22.1) 20.3 (15.9) 3.1 (4.0) 35 (20.8) 91 (54.2) 42 (25.0) 3 (1.8) 3 (1.8) 2,462.5 (663.2) 2,375.2 (686.1) 2,320.4 (573.3) 2,299.4 (564.1) 2,327.4 (610.0) 12.3 (16.0) 4.0 (5.7) 3.8 (5.7) Standard deviation (SD), a Statistical significant difference in both sexes; b Statistical significant difference for men; c Statistical significant difference for women. The means differences were compared using Analysis of Variance and Tukey's test. image disturbance and the incidence of depression remained without statistical significance. found, with most cases selecting only one silhouette below (42.7%) or above (2.6%) their actual BMI. Table 4 shows the results after restricting the case definition to the medical diagnosis of depression, eliminating the participants who only reported use of antidepressants during follow-up. Among women, underestimation of body size was inversely associated with the incidence of depression after adjusting for age (OR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.54 – 0.95), but this relationship was not maintained after adjusting for other possible confounding variables. Discussion The results of our study do not support any association between body image disturbance and incidence of depression. However, our study was not informative for males who overestimated their body size, because we found a very small proportion of males in that category and a single case of incident depression among them. In figure 2 the categories of body image disturbance in the participants of this study are shown. The proportion of participants who correctly perceived their body size was high (53.3%) and gross misperception was seldom This is in contrast to some results observed by other researchers who examined this topic [8, 10, 16, 17]. However, those studies had a cross sectional design, which does not assure the temporal sequence of the Page 5 of 9 (page number not for citation purposes)