Estimation of body fat and body fat distribution in 11‐year‐old children using magnetic resonance imaging and hydrostatic weighing, skinfolds, and anthropometry

Abstract

From early pubescence, both degree and distribution of fatness have been related to health risk factors. Measures that are capable of providing estimates of overall fatness and the extent of high risk fat patterning are, therefore, advantageous. The objective of this study was to compare estimates of body fatness and fat distribution using magnetic resonance imaging with the traditional methods of hydrostatic weighing, skinfolds, and anthropometry in 11-year-old boys and girls. Subjects were 25 boys and 25 girls, representative of their age cohort's body mass index (BMI) range. Total fat using MRI was obtained by summing subcutaneous and internal fat areas from four transaxial scans at the chest, waist, hips, and thigh. Mean MRI total fat (MRI FAT) was 357 (±152) cm with a range of 172-739 cm for boys and 427 (±174) cm with a range of 209-995 for girls. Correlation analyses revealed strong relationships between MRI FAT and UWW FAT (r = 0.73 boys, r = 0.77 girls), and the sum of four skinfolds (r = 0.94 boys, r = 0.88 girls). Analysis of the MRI data alone revealed that MRI FAT variation is largely explained by subcutaneous fat deposition at the waist in boys and at the level of the buttocks in girls, with most skinfolds correlating highly with MRI FAT in both sexes. Results of stepwise multiple regression showed that an abdominal skinfold and thigh circumference explained 95% of MRI FAT in boys, and 86% of the variance in girls. These data show that magnetic resonance images can provide useful information for the identification of discriminating field measures of fatness and its distribution in 11-year-old children. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Assessment of abdominal fat development in young adolescents using magnetic resonance imaging

“…Body breadths were measured at the biacromial and bitrochanteric sites using a sliding beam anthropometer. The same skinfold, girth and circumference combinations, including sum of skinfolds, trunk to limb ratios, waist ± hip circumference ratio (WHR) were used as in the previous study 9,10 to assess fat distribution. These combinations were selected from suggestions from previous research assessing childrens' fat distribution.…”

“…It has provided reliable estimates of intra-abdominal fat and subcutaneous fat areas in transverse scans and recently, with a sample of men, multiple scans have shown promise in the estimation of fat volumes. 5 Progress has been made using CT or MRI with the estimation of intra-abdominal fat in pre-pubertal children, 6 ± 8 early pubertal children, 9,10 and adolescents. 3,11 These studies, although few in number, have provided the ®rst assessments of the degree and nature of intra-abdominal deposition in children.…”

Anthropometric measurements in both sides of the body in the assessment of nutritional status in prepubertal children

“…There is no agreement about the side of the body from which anthropometric measurements must be obtained. In general, in Europe Deurenberg et al, 1990Deurenberg et al, ,1999Gurrici et al, 1998) and in children (Tanner & Whitehouse, 1962,1975Gerver & de Brain, 1996;Moreno et al, 1998;Paul et al, 1998), we choose the left side of the body, and in sports medicine (Peters et al, 1994;Eliakim et al, 1997;Katzmarzyk et al, 1999) and in North America (Johnston et al, 1988;Must et al, 1991;Sangi & Mueller, 1991), the right side of the body is used. Some papers even show data from both sides (Lean et al, 1996) and others use the non-dominant side of each individual (Barker et al, 1997).…”

Influence of anthropometric parameters on the body composition measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis or DXA in children

“…In Portuguese children of about the same age as ours, Teixeira et al (25) indicated that the sum of three trunk skinfolds was highly (p < 0.001) related to total trunk fat mass measured using DXA. In comparison, Peters et al (26) using MRI indicated that the horizontal abdominal skinfold had a strongest correlation with total body fat in girls. Mesomorphy, which mirrors the developmental stage of the musculo-skeletal systems from the somatotype components, characterized 35% of the body impedance in boys (see Table 3).…”