Percentage Body Fat in Apparently Healthy School Children From Northern India.
Loading...
Date
2013-09
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Context: Increased prevalence of obesity in childhood and
adolescence, defined by the use of body mass index (BMI), has
drawn attention towards direct measurement of body fat
Objective: To develop age-and sex-specific reference
distribution of body fat in apparently healthy North-Indian children
in the age group of 7-17 years and to assess agreement between
obesity (defined by BMI) and excess body fat
Design: Study subjects for this cross sectional study
included1640 apparently healthy school children (825 boys; 815
girls) aged 7-17 years. Total body fat was measured by dual
energy X-rays absorptiometry (DXA). The excess body fat by DXA
was defined by two methods, prevalence matching and with the
use of 85th and 95th centile cutoffs.
Results: The mean ± SD, 3rd, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and
97th centile values of percentage body fat (PBF) are
presented. PBF was highly correlated with BMI in both boys and
girls (all boys: r=0.76, P<0.0001; all girls r=0.81, P<0.0001).
There was no significant difference noted in PBF between boys
and girls at the age of 7-8 years. From 9 years onwards, girls had
significantly higher PBF than boys. Moderate degree of
agreement was observed between BMI and PBF by DXA by both
methods.
Conclusions: Smoothened reference distribution of PBF for
North-Indian children and adolescents in Delhi are provided.
Indian children accumulate more body fat during peri-pubertal
years in comparison with US children.
Description
Keywords
Percentage body fat, Obesity, Adolescents, Reference values, India, Assessment values
Citation
Khadgawat R, Marwaha R K, Tandon N, Mehan N, Upadhyay A D, Sastry A, Bhadra K. Percentage Body Fat in Apparently Healthy School Children From Northern India. Indian Pediatrics. 2013 September; 50(9): 859-866.