The Development of Reference Values for Waist Circumference, Waist Hip and Waist Height Ratios in Egyptian Adolescents.

Background: Egypt represents one of highest prevalence African countries regarding obesity among school students. Objective: The development of accurate anthropometric measures of central fat accumulation in Egyptian adolescents as an urgent need for both clinical and research purposes. Methods: This was a cross sectional study involving 800 adolescents aged 12-17.99 years using a multistage cluster sampling design to get a representative sample of students for whom the following anthropometric measures were assessed: weight, height, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference. Then waist hip ratio (WHR) and waist height ratio (WHTR) were calculated. These data were analysed to get the mean, standard deviation and percentiles for the WC, WHR and WHTR distributed according to age and sex. Results: Mean, standard deviation and percentiles (5th, 10th, 15th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, and 95th) were created for the WC, WHR and WHTR for Egyptian adolescents according to age and sex. Egyptian adolescents had higher values for the waist circumference than other ethnic groups. Conclusions: Egyptian mean, standard deviation and percentiles values are better to be used for evaluation of Egyptian adolescents with obesity for clinical and research purposes.