Diagnostic Performance Of Anthropometric Indices In Assessing Excess Fat Among Hong Kong Chinese Children And Adolescents

Abstract

In large-scale population surveys and public health screenings, the use of simple anthropometric indices has become popular for identifying children and adolescents who are overweight and obesity. However, The relationship between these anthropometric indices and body fat percentage (%BF) is not well established for children and adolescents, including those in Hong Kong. PURPOSE: The aim of the present study is to investigate the performance of body mass index (BMI) weight-for-height (PWH), waist circumference (WC) and waist-for-height ratio (WHtR) as diagnostic tests in screening excess body fat among Hong Kong children and adolescents, METHODS: A total of 2134 Chinese children and adolescents aged 9-19 years old (1135 boys and 999 girls) participated in the study. %BF was assessed by Tanita TBF-543 BIA analyser, excess body fat was defined as over 25% body fat for boys and over 30% for girls. The area under the ROC (AUC) was used as a measure of the overall accuracy of BMI, PWH, WC, and WHtR in detecting excess body fat. RESULTS: Among boys, no significant difference was found in AUC among the measures for BMI-SDS, WC-SDS, WHtR-SDS, and PWH. The values of AUC indicate that these measures have excellent accuracy in screening excessive %BF among boys (AUC>0.9). However, among girls, BMI-SDS and PWH had a larger AUC than WC-SDS and WHtR-SDS (X2=30.90, p0.9), while WC-SDS and WHtR-SDS have moderate accuracy in screening excessive %BF (0.7<AUC<0.9). CONCLUSIONS: Good and comparable diagnostic performance in screening excess body fat was shown among BMI, PWH, WC, and WHtR for boys Hong Kong Chinese children and adolescents. Among girls, the well and comparable diagnostic performance in screening excess body fat was found between BMI and PWH, but not in WC and WHtR.