Overfat cutoffs and the optimal combination of body fat indices for detecting cardiometabolic risk among school‐aged children

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to develop cutoffs and the optimal combination for body fat indices for screening cardiometabolic risk (CMR) among the pediatric population.Methods: This cross-sectional study consisted of 8710 (50.3% boys) Chinese children aged 6 to 18 years. Body fat indices, including fat mass index (FMI), body fat percentage, trunk to leg fat ratio (TLR), and android to gynoid fat ratio, were derived from dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scans. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was used to determine the best combination and optimal cutoffs of body fat indices to identify CMR.Results: Compared with anthropometry-based obesity measures, i.e., BMI and waist circumference, the FMI + TLR combination presented statistically higher area under the receiver operating characteristic curve values for discriminating CMR and its clustering.The optimal overfat cutoffs of FMI and TLR were respectively determined at the 75th percentile in boys and at the 80th percentile of FMI and the 75th percentile of TLR in girls. Moreover, simplified thresholds derived from age-group-merged cutoffs showed similar performance as optimal cutoffs in detecting CMR.Conclusions: Both the optimal and simplified overfat cutoffs were provided for the Chinese pediatric population. The use of FMI and TLR together allows for adequate screening of CMR and its clustering.