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Updated: Aug 22, 2026

Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Thinness among young Japanese women
Hidemi Takimoto1, Nobuo Yoshiike, Fumi Kaneda
1Division of Health and Nutrition Monitoring, National Institute of Health and Nutrition, Tokyo, Japan. thidemi@nih.go.jp
Objectives:
We described changes in body mass index (BMI) and the prevalence of thinness among young Japanese women (aged 15-29 years) from 1976 to 2000 by reanalyzing the nationwide data in the National Nutrition Survey, Japan.
Methods:
We used height and weight data sets for 30 903 nonpregnant, nonlactating women during the 25-year period. We calculated the mean values of BMI and the prevalence of thinness for 3 age groups (15-19, 20-24, and 25-29 years of age).
Results:
Changes in BMI per 10 years were -0.17 kg/m2, -0.22 kg/m2, and -0.34 kg/m2 for each age group, respectively. Extreme thinness (BMI < 17 kg/m2) increased from 2.4% in 1976-1980 to 4.2% in 1996-2000.
Conclusions:
Further studies regarding topics such as increased smoking prevalence are needed to identify the underlying causes of increasing thinness.
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