Relationship of anthropometric measures of fatness to serum lipid concentration in school children: A cross sectional study

Background Body fat distribution is associated with adverse health outcomes in adults. Research has shown that these usually begin in childhood. We thus set out to examine the relationship between body fat and the occurrence of adverse serum lipid profile in apparently healthy Nigerian School children. Methods This was a cross sectional observational study carried out between December 2013 and June 2014. Stratified random sampling was used in the recruitment process. All children present in school were eligible for selection except those on drugs known to predispose to dyslipidaemia. STATA version 14 was used for all statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate means and proportions while linear regression was used in investigating relationship between serum lipid concentration and measures of adiposity. Logistic regression was used to predict the relationship between measures of adiposity and adverse serum lipid status. Results A total of 240 school age children (56% females) aged 6‐12 years (mean age=9.2±1.65 years) were studied. Total serum cholesterol was significantly associated with percent body fat(R=0.07; p=0.01) and hip circumference (R=0.02; p=0.023). Serum low density lipoprotein was significantly associated with percent body fat(R=0.05; p=0.04), waist circumference (R=0.02; p=0.01) and triceps diameter(R=0.06;p=0.04). Similarly, serum triglycerides was significantly associated with waist height ratio (R=0.64; p=0.04). No significant relationship was seen between high density lipoprotein cholesterol and any of the measures of adiposity. Logistic regression using those variables that have been consistently shown to be significantly related to serum lipid measures demonstrated only WC (OR=0.9; 95% CI=0.8‐0.99) and triceps diameter (OR=1.26; 95% CI=1.02‐1.56) significantly predicted bad total serum cholesterol status. Conclusions Subcutaneous adiposity and waist circumference are more reliable measures of serum lipids in school age children and thus more useful as a screening tool for dyslipidaemia during school health screening