Relationship of weight and height with waist circumference, body mass index and conicity index in adolescents

Abstract

Obesity or overweight in adolescents are a public health issue. Waist circumference (WC) body mass index (.BMI'), and conicity index (C l) have been used to assess these conditions and the risks involved. The aim of this study was to assess the influence o f weight and height on WC, BMI and Cl in adolescents. Student t test, ANOVA, Pearson correlations and binary correspondence were used. At 13-14 years, BMI (r = 0.89; r = 0.92) and WC (r = 0.85; r = 0.83) showed high correlations with iveight. C had a low correlation with iveight and lesser dependence on height. Binary correspondence analysis, showed that high values of weight were associated with high values of Cl. In this sample, Cl is not an indicator of body mass as a whole, yet it shows that heavy weight is associated with centripetal fat distribution as measured by this indicator and in this sense, it can be used as an index of fat distribution.