Global Journal of Biology, Agriculture & Health Sciences

Abstract

REFERENCE VALUES OF BODY FAT INDICES FOR SEMI URBAN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENT OF BENGALEE ETHNICITY

Purushottam Pramanik, Rohitaswa Chowdhury,Arnab Das

Childhood overweight and obesity is a pandemic worldwide with a large population being affected in developed and developing countries. Increased prevalence of obesity defined by the use of body mass index has drawn attention towards direct measurement of body fat. To create gender specific percentile for body fat percentage (BF %), Total body fat mass (TBFM) and fat mass index (FMI) for screening adiposity of eastern Indian children and adolescent are the objectives of this study. The present study was conducted among 2869 school children having 6-18 years. BF % was calculated on the basis of anthropometric indices, Body mass index (BMI) consideration of age and sex.TBFM was obtained from body weight and BF% (TBFM= [BF% x body weight ]/100). FMI was obtained by dividing body fat mass with square of the height (FMI [kg/m2]= body fat mass [kg] / height2 [m]).In order to define clinically and epidemiologically useful cutoffs we adopted cutoffs -85th percentile to define the lower limit of over fat, 95th percentile as lower limit of obese and 2nd percentile as upper limit of under fat. These have been designed to yield similar proportions of overweight/over fat and obese children to the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) body mass index cutoffs. Significant differences were noted for BF%, TBFM and FMI between boys and girls from 12 years onward where girl values were significantly higher than boy’s counterpart. The median BF% increased little (22%) from 6-18 years of age in boys compared with that of girls (45%). The median values of TBFM and BFI increased rapidly with advancing age of boys and girls though the rate of increment was higher in girls than boys’ counterpart. Direct measurement of adiposity, the component of overweight represents a significant advance over BMI. Percentile values being developed in this study would be useful in assessment of under-fat, over -fat and obese.

Published Date: 2014-10-09;