Evaluation of early body shape for epidemiological research in absence of objective measurements

Background Developing countries are undergoing epidemiological transitions with increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCD). There is increasing appreciation of the role of early life exposure in the etiology of many of these conditions particularly the role of body shape and size for given age. However, many of these environments lack early life records of birth and growth. So it is not possible to correlate early life characteristics with risk of disease in these populations. In this study we, evaluated the use of body images as an estimator of body size and characteristics.