Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Aug;21(8):e13041.
doi: 10.1111/obr.13041. Epub 2020 May 6.

Assessment of body composition in pediatric overweight and obesity: A systematic review of the reliability and validity of common techniques

Camila E Orsso  1 , Maria Ines B Silva  1   2   3 , Maria Cristina Gonzalez  4   5 , Daniela A Rubin  6 , Steven B Heymsfield  5 , Carla M Prado  1 , Andrea M Haqq  1   7
Affiliations

Assessment of body composition in pediatric overweight and obesity: A systematic review of the reliability and validity of common techniques

Camila E Orsso et al. Obes Rev. 2020 Aug.

Abstract

Accurate measurement of body composition is required to improve health outcomes in children and adolescents with overweight or obesity. This systematic review aimed to summarize the reliability and validity of field and laboratory body composition techniques employed in pediatric obesity studies to facilitate technique selection for research and clinical practice implementation. A systematic search in MEDLINE (via PubMed), EMBASE, CINAHL, and SPORTDiscus from inception up to December 2019 was conducted, using a combination of the following concepts: body composition, pediatric overweight/obesity, and reliability/validity. The search strategy resulted in 66 eligible articles reporting reliability (19.7%), agreement between body composition techniques cross sectionally (80.3%), and/or diagnostic test accuracy (10.6%) in children and adolescents with overweight or obesity (mean age range = 7.0-16.5 years). Skinfolds, air-displacement plethysmography (ADP), dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and ultrasound presented as reliable techniques. DXA, ADP, and isotope dilution showed similar and the best agreement with reference standards. Compared with these laboratory techniques, the validity of estimating body composition by anthropometric equations, skinfolds, and BIA was inferior. In conclusion, the assessment of body composition by laboratory techniques cannot be replaced by field techniques due to introduction of measurement errors, which potentially conceal actual changes in body components.

Keywords: body composition; children; obesity.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Worldwide trends in body-mass index, underweight, overweight, and obesity from 1975 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 2416 population-based measurement studies in 128·9 million children, adolescents, and adults. Lancet. 2017;390(10113):2627-2642. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32129-3
    1. Di Cesare M, Sorić M, Bovet P, et al. The epidemiological burden of obesity in childhood: a worldwide epidemic requiring urgent action. BMC Med. 2019;17(1):212. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1449-8
    1. World Health Organization (WHO). Report of the Comission on Ending Childhood Obesity: implementation plan: executive summary. Vol 1.; 2017. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhep.2013.02.018
    1. Kelly AS, Fox CK, Rudser KD, Gross AC, Ryder JR. Pediatric obesity pharmacotherapy: current state of the field, review of the literature and clinical trial considerations. Int J Obes (Lond). 2016;40(7):1043-1050. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2016.69
    1. Vanderwall C, Eickhoff J, Randall Clark R, Carrel AL. BMI z-score in obese children is a poor predictor of adiposity changes over time. BMC Pediatr. 2018;18(1):1-6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-018-1160-5

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources