Percentage body fat in apparently healthy school children from northern India

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 included 1640 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.