The incidence of abdominal obesity and the associated metabolic disturbances in the children aged 7-13 years

Abstract

Stage 1 of the present study was designed to estimate the incidence of abdominal obesity among 878 schoolchildren aged between 7 and 13 years using the percentile tables for the waist circumference (WC) in the children's population of the United Kingdom and from the WC/height ratio that makes it possible to identify children at the highest risk of metabolic disturbances. The incidence of abdominal obesity based on the criterion of WC≤90th percentile (PC) for the age and the sex was estimated to be 33.1% for the entire group in the absence of significant difference between boys and girls (30.7% vs 35,5%). The incidence of abdominal obesity based on the criterion of WC/height ratio with a threshold value of ≤0.5 was 9.9% for both sexes in the entire group; it was significantly higher in the boys than in the girls (13.1% vs 6.9%). At the second stage of the study, the group of the children having WC≤90th percentile (n=51) showed significantly higher systolic and diastolic arterial pressure, blood triglyceride and insulin levels and HOMAIR index but lower HDL levels than control patients with WC < 90th percentile (n=28). The results of the study suggest the high incidence of abdominal obesity among young schoolchildren residing in large cities. Moreover, such children tend to develop metabolic disturbances and are at risk of cardiovascular diseases.