Abstract
A high waist circumference (WC) is used as a risk factor for impaired fasting blood glucose (IFG) in adults. This association is less studied in children and teenagers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between having a high WC and IFG by sex and age in a sample of Mexican children and teenagers. We analyzed the data of 12979 participants aged 5 to 17 years to calculate percentile references for uncorrected WC, corrected for height (WC/HT) and by height squared (WC/HT2) with quantile regression. A subsample of 2309 participants with fasting blood glucose samples (FBG), WC, WC/HT and WC/HT2 values was analyzed with logistic regression. A high WC, WC/HT, and WC/HT2 were considered at the sex- and age-specific 90th percentile from the subsample. The IFG was considered as FBG ≥100 mg/dL. Having a high WC, WC/HT, nor WC/HT2 was not significantly associated with IFG for either sex and age group (all p > 0.05). A high WC, either on its uncorrected or corrected for height values, was not an important assessment for predicting IFG in a sample of Mexican children and teenagers. This study provides percentile reference values specific for sex and age.
Highlights
The prevalence of obesity and its associated comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes (T2D), and cardiovascular diseases, has increased worldwide [1,2,3]
The assessment of fasting blood glucose (FBG) concentrations is a commonly used tool, from which we can determine whether the patient could be diagnosed with T2D, with an impaired fasting blood glucose concentration (IFG), or with a normal concentration [11]
After discarding participants’ records with missing data for waist circumference, body weight, or height, and those with unlikely values for waist circumference (
Summary
The prevalence of obesity and its associated comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes (T2D), and cardiovascular diseases, has increased worldwide [1,2,3]. This pattern was observed in children and teenagers as well [3,4,5,6]. In clinical practice and epidemiological studies, FBG tests are not always available Other tools, such as anthropometric measurements, are used for screening purposes because they are more accessible and less invasive than blood testing [13,14,15,16]. BMI might not be sensible to fat distribution, and studies suggest that stored fat location, visceral fat, is important for health outcomes [18,19]
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