TOPLINE:
In children and young adults, the waist circumference-to-height ratio is more accurate than the body mass index (BMI) at predicting excess body fat.
METHODOLOGY:
- A 15-year study of 7237 children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort.
- Participants underwent dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanning at ages 9, 11, 15, 17, and 24 years.
- Author compared waist circumference-to-height ratio and BMI against DEXA-measured total and truncal fat mass.
TAKEAWAY:
- The waist circumference-to-height ratio correlated much better with DEXA than BMI did.
- This was true in males and females and for both total and truncal fat mass.
- Above a certain cutoff, specificity for predicting excess fat mass was especially high.
IN PRACTICE:
“[Waist circumference-to-height ratio] may be universally adopted as non-invasive and inexpensive fat mass overweight and obesity surveillance, monitoring, and prevention initiatives in routine paediatric healthcare practice, particularly in low-resource settings,” the author wrote.
SOURCE:
The study was conducted by a researcher jointly based in Exeter and Finland and appeared online in Pediatric Research.
LIMITATIONS:
Participants were largely White, potentially limiting generalisability to other groups.
DISCLOSURES:
ALSPAC was funded by the UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome and the University of Bristol; the author’s research group received support from multiple foundations in Finland.
Source link : https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/waist-height-ratio-better-bet-than-bmi-children-2024a10004cp?src=rss
Author :
Publish date : 2024-03-11 13:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.