Original articleWaist-to-Height Ratio, a Useful Index to Identify High Metabolic Risk in Overweight Children
Section snippets
Methods
Italian children (740 boys and 739 girls, n = 1479), ranging from 5 to 15 years of age, participated in the study. The children and adolescents were recruited from 15 national clinical centres for the care of childhood obesity equally distributed in the north, centre and south of Italy, between the autumn of 2003 and spring 2004. At their physical examination, the children were found to be healthy and not in treatment for any disease. A group of 974 healthy normal-weight children who came to
Results
The physical characteristics of the children, divided into 3 groups based on their BMI, are shown in Table I. In both sexes, all physical and biochemical variables were significantly higher (except for HDL cholesterol, which was lower) in subjects with a larger waist or W/Hr than in those with a smaller waist or W/Hr (data not shown).
The proportions of boys and girls with biochemical or physical measures higher than the predefined cutoffs are shown in Table II (available at www.jpeds.com). As
Discussion
The results of this study show that waist circumference and W/Hr are useful to identify overweight children at higher metabolic and cardiovascular risk. The considerable association between excess adiposity and morbidity justifies looking for MCVRF markers in all obese individuals.4 However, MCVRFs are also often found in subjects who, on the basis of their BMI, have been defined as overweight.10, 34 Freedman et al35 recently reported that 70% of overweight children have at least one MCVRF; 52%
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Brambilla Paolo, MD, Cerutti Franco, MD, Corciulo Nicola, MD, Cuccarolo Giuliano, MD, Di Pietro Mario, MD, Falorni Adriano, MD, Franzese Adriana, MD, Gennari Monia, MD, Grugni Graziano, MD, Iughetti Lorenzo, MD, Miraglia Del Giudice Emanuele, MD, Petri Antonella, MD, Trada Marcello, MD, and Yiannakou Petros, MD.