Association of anthropometric, body composition and physiological measures with physical activity level among the children and adolescents of Asian Indian origin: the Calcutta obesity study

Abstract

Objective: To look into the association between anthropometric, body compositional and physiological characteristics with physical activity among the children and adolescents of Asian Indian origin.

Methods: A total of 469 children and adolescents (250 boys and 219 girls) aged 8-18 years took part in the present cross-sectional study. A pre-designed schedule was used to collect information on socioeconomic characteristics and type of activities performed by them.

Results: It was observed that there was an inversely proportional trend for different anthropometric, body compositional and physiological measures with the duration of different types of physical activities. Moreover, walking, cycling and racing were observed to be correlated inversely with sum of four skinfold (SF4) and the ratio of SF4 and BMI (SF4: BMI). Furthermore, significant (p < 0.01) inverse correlation was observed in case of mean arterial pressure (MAP) with the duration of walking, cyclicing and gym. It was observed that about 14% (R² = 0.14) of the total variance of MAP was explained by duration of different types of physical activity and parental characteristics.

Conclusions: Habitual moderate physical activity may be beneficial to prevent excess accumulation of fat during childhood and adolescence and warranted further investigation about the importance of physical activity to prevent increasing trend of childhood obesity.