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Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
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Total body fat content versus BMI in 4-year-old healthy Swedish children

Elisabet Forsum1, Eva Flinke Carlsson, Hanna Henriksson

  • 1Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, 58185 Linköping, Sweden. elisabet.forsum@liu.se

Journal of Obesity
|April 23, 2013
PubMed

Insights

Body mass index (BMI) cut-offs are unreliable for identifying high body fat in young children. Air displacement plethysmography (ADP) accurately measured body composition in 4-year-olds, revealing BMI

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Endocrinology and Nutrition
  • Body Composition Analysis in Children

Background:

  • Childhood overweight and obesity are global health concerns.
  • Current body mass index (BMI) classifications are not well-validated for assessing body fat in children under five.
  • Accurate body composition assessment methods are needed for this age group.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between BMI and body fat percentage in 4.4-year-old children.
  • To evaluate the efficacy of BMI-based cut-offs for identifying high body fat in this population.

Main Methods:

  • Body composition was assessed using air displacement plethysmography (ADP), a validated method for young children.
  • Seventy-six children (43 boys, 33 girls) aged approximately 4.4 years participated.
  • Statistical analysis examined the correlation between BMI and body fat percentage.

Main Results:

  • Boys and girls exhibited mean body fat percentages of 25.2% ± 4.7% and 26.8% ± 4.0%, respectively.
  • BMI-based cut-offs for overweight failed to accurately identify children with high body fat.
  • A significant but weak correlation (r = 0.39, P < 0.001) was found between BMI and body fat percentage.

Conclusions:

  • Air displacement plethysmography (ADP) is a feasible method for assessing body composition in 4-year-olds.
  • BMI-based classifications are ineffective for identifying high body fat in this age group.
  • BMI accounts for only a small portion of the variance in body fat percentage among 4-year-olds.

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