title: Waist circumference and waist for height percentiles in urban South Indian children aged 3-16 years.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop age and gender specific waist circumference references for urban Indian children aged 3 -16 years.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional study.
  
  
  METHODS
  Urban preschools and schools of Bangalore.
  
  
  METHODS
  9060 children (5172 boys and 3888 girls) in the age group of 3-16 years.
  
  
  METHODS
  Weight, height, and waist circumference were measured using standard anthropometric methodology. Percentiles for waist circumference and Waist/height ratio (W/Ht) for each age and gender were constructed and smoothed using the LMS method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Mean waist circumference increased with age for both girls and boys.  The upper end of curve in boys continued to increase, whereas in the girls it tended to plateau at 14 years. The waist circumference of the Indian children from the present study was higher than age and sex matched European children. The proportion of children with W/Ht ratio greater than 0.5 decreased as their age increased.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These curves represent the first waist and waist height ratio percentiles for Indian children and could be used as reference values for urban Indian children.  We suggest that for a start, the 75th percentile of waist circumference from this study be used as an action point for Indian children to identify obesity (as a tautological argument), while retaining the cut-off of 0.5 for the W/Ht ratio; however this underlines the need to derive biologically rational cut-offs that would relate to different levels of risk for adult cardiovascular disease.
authors.affiliation: Division of Nutrition, St Johns Research Institute, St Johns National Academy of Health Sciences, Bangalore, India. rebecca@sjri.res.in
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kuriyan
authors.forename: Tinku
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: Deepa P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Lokesh
authors.forename: Nishita R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Sheth
authors.forename: Anvesha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mahendra
authors.forename: Renju
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Joy
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sumithra
authors.forename: Swarnarekha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bhat
authors.forename: Anura V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Kurpad
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001827:Body Height; D001835:Body Weight; D001837:Body Weights and Measures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D014505:Urban Population; D055105:Waist Circumference