Norms for nutritional assessment of American adults by upper arm anthropometry

Abstract

Extract: Age- and sex-specific percentile distributions for the mid-upper arm and arm muscle circumferences and triceps skinfold thicknesses of American adults were developed from data collected during the Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES) of 1971 to 1974. For both sexes, comparisons of percentiles for different age cohorts revealed marked variations related to aging. For men, both arm and arm muscle circumferences generally increased with aging until middle-age and then steadily decreased. For women, all parameters increased progressively until age was well advanced and then stabilized, or declined, with the onset of senescence. Triceps skinfold thicknesses in men showed large fluctuations but no consistent trends with advancing age. These data were compared with similar data obtained during the Health Examination Survey of 1960 to 1962. Comparisons of the 2 surveys revealed that median arm circumferences of men and women were larger in 1972 than in 1961 for every age group examined; that median skinfold thicknesses for women were as large or larger in 1972 than in 1961 except for women aged 65 to 74 years; and that median skinfold thicknesses for men were nearly identical in both surveys. The comparisons suggest that secular and age-related influences produced the variations apparent with advancing age in the percentile distributions developed from the HANES data. Secular influences, however, did not contribute to variations in distributions for the skinfold thicknesses of men. No single value for each parameter could be considered as normal for either sex. The validity of currently used sex-specific norms for nutritional assessment of adults is therefore questioned. (author/nm)