In 1971 triceps skinfold thickness was measured in a sample of 6-14-year-old children attending school in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. The sample consisted of 1,243 boys and 1,183 girls. In both boys and girls triceps skinfolds tended to increase with age, this being most marked in the girls. If a 25 mm triceps skinfold is taken as indicating obesity, then 32-4% of the 14-year old girls and 3-6%...

Assessing neonatal size reliably is important for research and clinical practice. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability of routine clinical measurements of neonatal circumferences and of skinfold thicknesses assessed for research purposes. All measurements were undertaken on the same population of neonates born in a large maternity unit in Bradford, UK. Technical error of measure...

OBJECTIVE In a previous study of the role of various predictors of adult obesity, we found that relatively tall children had a higher body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) in early adulthood. In this study, the objective was to determine whether childhood height is related to adult adiposity and whether the association is independent of childhood levels of BMI and triceps skinfold thickness. METHODS T...

Background: The advancement of technology has reduced people’s energy consumption levels. Some precautions have been taken for certain age groups, nonetheless there are a few researches about how the conditions of middle-aged women are. The aim of this study was to determine the physical fitness levels of women living in Canakkale province and to find out the differences between those women in ...

METHODS The sample examined consisted of 413 men and 406 women aged 20-90 years. This sample was obtained in two parts. The first contained 215 men and 272 women aged 62-90 years, who formed a simple random sample of the 27,000 older people living in a defined area of Edinburgh. The method of sampling these subjects, who are taking part in a longitudinal study of ageing persons, has been descri...

BACKGROUND Childhood obesity has been a serious public health problem. An effective school-based physical activity (PA) intervention is still lacking in China. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a school-based physical activity intervention during 12 weeks on obesity and related health outcomes in school children. METHODS It was a non-randomized controlled trial. Altogether 921 c...

Skinfold standards provide a useful indication of subcutaneous fat. To evaluate skinfold thickness of 252 Cambridge infants over the first 2 years of age, SD scores relative to the Tanner standards were calculated, taking account of skewness in the standards. Cambridge SD scores were low, varying according to age from -1.2 to -1.8 for triceps and -0.6 to -1.2 for subscapular skinfolds. The Tann...

BACKGROUND Childhood socioeconomic disadvantage has been linked with obesity in cross-sectional research, although less is known about how changes in socioeconomic status influence the development of obesity. Researchers have hypothesized that upward socioeconomic mobility may attenuate the health effects of earlier socioeconomic disadvantage; while downward socioeconomic mobility might have a ...

A number of evolutionary theories of human life history assume a quantity-quality tradeoff for offspring production: parents with fewer offspring can have higher biological fitness than those with more. Direct evidence for such a tradeoff, however, is mixed. We tested this assumption in a community of Ecuadorian Shuar hunter-horticulturalists, using child anthropometry as a proxy for fitness. W...