Measurement of Neck Circumference and Its Correlation with Body Composition in a Sample of Students in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to verify the correlation between neck circumference (NC) and body mass index (BMI) in children, and to determine NC percentiles for Brazilian children. Methods: The subjects of this cross-sectional study were students between the ages of 6 and 19 years from five schools in São Paulo, Brazil. Clinical and anthropometric data were collected from the students from April 2011 to June 2012. NC was measured at the level of the cricoid cartilage. We calculated Pearson correlation coefficients between NC and other indices of obesity with Sigma Stat 3.5. NC percentiles were produced using the LMS (lambda, mu, and sigma) method (STATA 12.0). Results: Among 2,794 students, 49.9% were male. NC was significantly correlated with age, BMI, waist circumference (WC), and body fat percentage (%BF). The NC of boys was greater than that of girls. The NC curves of smoothed 3rd, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, and 97th percentiles were constructed by age and sex. Conclusions: NC can be used in the assessment of obesity in childhood. There was a positive correlation between NC and BMI, WC and %BF. This study was the first to provide NC percentiles for children in Brazil.

Neck circumference as a complementary measure to identify excess body weight in children aged 13-24 months

“…The results of this study have shown that body weight and BMI have a positive correlation with NC, corroborating other studies conducted with children older than 2 years of age, in Brazil and other countries. 7,9,12,13,[15][16][17][18]20 The results of the present study also show that there was a moderate positive correlation between NC and BMI in both genders according to age group, supporting the results from studies conducted with Turkish, American and Chinese children. 7,12,18 However, some important limitations should be considered.…”

“…17 Until the publication of this study, only NC measures with children five years of age or over had been reported. 7,9,12,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] This study has several strengths. It is a homebased design, which includes primary data from a non-institutionalized population.…”

“…16 An additional advantage of using NC as a proxy for upper body fat distribution is that it shows no variation in size throughout the day. 7,12 Although several studies have been published that have examined NC as a measure for identifying excess body weight, 7,9,12,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] to our knowledge, no study has been conducted with children under two years of age. The purpose of the present study was thus to evaluate the accuracy of NC as a measure for assessing excess body weight in children aged [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and to provide NC data to help establish guidelines that can be used to identify excess body weight in children under two years of age.…”

Neck circumference in adolescents and cardiometabolic risk: A sistematic review

“…NC and the technical aspects to measuring it Seventy-two percent (72%) of the studies performed measurements at the level of the thyroid cartilage, an easily identifiable reference landmark. The other measurement sites were: just below the thyroid cartilage, 23 the cricoid cartilage 8,30 and at halfway the height of the neck. 21,26 In only three studies the measurements had been taken as duplicates or triplicates, 15,23,25 a fact of little relevance due to the already well-documented reproducibility of this type of measurement.…”

Reported shoes size during GH therapy: is foot overgrowth a myth or reality?

“…The reference population data was previously described (6), and presented in this study including 3,651 school students from five government and private schools and family members (Male: 1,838; Female: 1,813), height SDS (mean ± SD) of 0.33 ± 1.1 and 0.21 ± 0.93 was observed in female and male controls, respectively. Height and target height were grouped by chronological age from 2 to 18 years, and ≥ 19 years in boys, and from 2 to 15 years, and ≥ 16 years in girls (Table 1).…”