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Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
09:36

Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study

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Defining overweight and obesity in pre-school children: IOTF reference or WHO standard?

L Monasta1, T Lobstein, T J Cole

  • 1Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute for Maternal and Child Health IRCCS Burlo Garofolo, Trieste, Italy. monasta@burlo.trieste.it

Obesity Reviews : an Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity
|May 25, 2010
PubMed

Insights

The International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) and WHO standards significantly differ in defining childhood overweight and obesity. This impacts prevalence rates, highlighting the need for standardized BMI cut-offs for preschool children.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatrics
  • Public Health
  • Epidemiology

Background:

  • Accurate identification of overweight and obesity in preschool children is crucial for early intervention.
  • Existing international datasets, such as the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) reference and the World Health Organization (WHO) standard, are used for classification.
  • Discrepancies between these datasets can lead to variations in prevalence estimates.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare the performance of the IOTF reference and WHO standard in defining overweight and obesity in preschool children aged 24-60 months.
  • To analyze the differences in prevalence rates using both datasets in a specific population.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized two international datasets: the IOTF reference and the WHO standard.
  • Plotted IOTF cut-offs against WHO curves for children aged 24-60 months.
  • Compared prevalence of overweight and obesity using both definitions with 2001 Czech Republic data.

Main Results:

  • The IOTF overweight cut-off corresponds to 1.7-1.1 z-scores on the WHO chart, and the obesity cut-off shifts from 2.7 to 2.2 z-scores with age.
  • At 5 years, overweight prevalence in Czech girls was 3.4% (WHO) versus 15.3% (IOTF).
  • Discrepancies arise from differing cut-off choices and sample selection criteria for the IOTF and WHO references.

Conclusions:

  • Significant differences exist between IOTF and WHO standards for classifying overweight and obesity in preschool children.
  • Urgent research is needed to establish WHO-standard BMI cut-offs linked to health risks.
  • Standardized definitions are essential for accurate epidemiological studies and public health interventions in childhood obesity.

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