Introduction Waist circumference (WC) constitutes an indirect measurement of central obesity in children and adolescents. Objective To provide percentiles of WC for Hispanic‐American children and adolescents, and compare them with other international references. Materials and methods The sample comprised 13 289 healthy children between 6 and 18 years coming from public schools of middle and low socioeconomic levels in different parts of Argentina, Cuba, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. The LMS method to calculate WC percentiles was applied. Sex and age differences were assessed using Student's t test and ANOVA (SPSS v.21.0). Comparisons were established with references from the United States, Colombia, India, China, Australia, Kuwait, Germany, Tunisia, Greece, and Portugal. Results WC increases with age in both sexes. Boys show higher WC in P3, P50, and P97. Comparison of 50th and 90th percentiles among populations from diverse sociocultural and geographical contexts shows high variability, not all justified by the measurement method. Discussion and conclusions Specific WC percentiles for sex and age, and P90 cut‐off points are provided; these values are potentially useful to assess central obesity in Hispanic‐American adolescent children.

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Adolescence is an important period of life characterised by morphological and physiological changes that have healthrelated significance. In recent decades, the improved standard of living conditions, as well as a change in the pattern of intake and quality of food plus reduced levels of physical activity, have increased the levels of overweight and obesity within this age group. The current cross-sectional study was conducted on 82 postmenarchal girls aged 13-17 years, from the city of Caracas, Venezuela. The aim of the investigation was to examine the relationship between frame size and percentage of body fat. Biceps, triceps, subscapular and medial calf skinfolds, and bicondylar widths of the humerus and femur were included in the anthropometric survey. The equations of Slaughter et al. (1988) and two linear regression analyses with humerus and femur widths as independent variables were used. Percentage body fat had a low to moderate (p<0.05) correlation with humerus (r = 0,39) and femur (r = 0.50) width. The results suggest that build, particularly as indicated by femur width may be a useful tool in the appraisal of adiposity in girls of these ages and may be of use in further research in other age groups.

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