Translating the chronic care model into the community: results from a randomized controlled trial of a multifaceted diabetes care intervention: response to Piatt et al.

assessment (HOMA) was computed by using the formula fasting glucose (mmol/ l) fasting insulin ( U/ml)/22.5. This study was approved by the local ethics committee. Written informed consent was obtained from each participant or his/her parents. Partial correlations (r) between cardiovascular risk factors and anthropometric indices were calculated after adjusting for age, sex, and ethnicity. We observed that WHR showed the highest correlations with total cholesterol (r 0.244), HDL (r 0.163), and LDL (r 0.231), while BMI showed the highest correlations with SBP (r 0.272) and DBP (r 0.104). WC displayed the highest correlations with fasting glucose (r 0.105). All three indices showed similar correlations with triglycerides (r 0.308 – 0.312), fasting insulin (r 0.224–0.232), and HOMA (r 0.210– 0.229). Linear regression was also performed to calculate the variation of cardiovascular risk factors explained by different anthropometric indices (R) after adjusting for age, sex, and ethnicity. The results confirmed our findings in the partial correlation analyses. The possible sex difference was also tested by including interaction between sex and anthropometric indices into the regression model. It showed that the effect of the three obesity indices on SBP differed between sexes (P 0.001 for WC and BMI; P 0.04 for WHR); however, further analyses in boys and girls separately showed that BMI explained the greater variation of SBP both in boys (R 7.9%) and girls (R 6.1%), than WC and WHR. Consistent with previous studies (1–3), we conclude that WHR was a better indicator of lipids and BMI was a better indicator of blood pressure in Chinese children. WC was shown as the best indicator of fasting glucose.