Research of body weight, height and waist circumference in children of Kyiv at the present stage

In recent decades, there has been a steady increase in the prevalence of obesity in children around the world. The low prevalence of obesity in children in Ukraine indicates the underdiagnosis of this disease by doctors. In addition to the generally accepted indicators - body weight, body mass index, for the diagnosis of obesity and prediction of complications is promising to use the data of waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio. Purpose - to study and evaluate the indicators of body weight, height, body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio in children in Kyiv at the present stage. Materials and methods. An analysis of the results of the survey of 784 children aged 3 to 18 years. Height, body weight, body mass index and waist circumference were estimated using standard centile tables. To estimate waist-to-height ratio, the limit value was considered to be 0.5. Statistical data processing was performed using MedStat v 5.2 and EZR v1.35. Results and conclusions. The height rates of 56.5% of the surveyed children in Kyiv ranged from 15 to 85 percentiles, 27.3% had excessive height rates and 12.8% exceeded 97 percentiles. Significant short stature was observed in only 0.5% of respondents. Body weight over 97 percentiles was almost twice as common in boys than in girls (p<0.05). BMI in 66.9% of children was within normal limits. Overweight was observed in 13.0% of children, 10.1% of respondents had obesity. Obesity was observed in boys more often than in girls (p=0.02). According to the results of the assessment of the waist circumference in 21.4% of all respondents, the results were found above 90 percentile. Increases in waist circumference were almost twice as common (p<0.05) among boys than among girls (25.4% and 17.3%, respectively). In boys with obesity and overweight, this figure exceeded the norm more often than in girls (p<0.05). The averages waist-to-height ratio was 0.46±0.19 among boys and 0.43±0.07 among girls. Individual analysis showed that the waist-to-height ratio was exceeded in 22.4% of boys and 15.2% of girls. Among boys and girls with obesity, the waist-to-height ratio was exceeded in 58.2% and 58.3%, respectively. The research was carried out in accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration. The study protocol was approved by the Local Ethics Committee of the participating institution. The informed consent of the patient was obtained for conducting the studies. No conflict of interests was declared by the authors.