BACKGROUND Increasing childhood obesity has become a major health threat. This cross-sectional study reports associations between schoolchildren's waist circumference (WC) and risk of elevated blood pressure. METHODS We measured height, weight, neck and waist circumference, and blood pressure in regular health examinations among children in grade 1 (ages 6-7 years) at six elementary schools i...

BACKGROUND A high waist-to-hip ratio is associated with unfavorable cardiovascular disease risk factors. This could be due to either a relatively large waist or a small hip girth. OBJECTIVE We sought to define the separate contributions of waist girth, hip girth, and body mass index (BMI) to measures of body composition, fat distribution, and cardiovascular disease risk factors. DESIGN Thre...

PURPOSE Both moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary behavior can be associated with adult adiposity. Much of the relevant evidence is from cross-sectional studies or from prospective studies with relevant exposure measures at a single time point before weight gain or incident obesity. This study examined whether changes in MVPA and television (TV) viewing time are associate...

AIM We aimed to investigate whether different measures of obesity could similarly predict atrial fibrillation, and whether the atrial fibrillation risk associated with obesity is dependent on presence of metabolic syndrome. MATERIAL AND METHODS We performed our study in a population-based longitudinal cardiovascular study, comprising 1 924 men and 2 097 women, aged 60 years, from Stockholm. B...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between alcohol consumption and abdominal fat. METHODS Cross-sectional study carried out in a sample of male blood donors (n=1,235), aged 20-59 years, in the city of Cuiabá, Central-West Brazil, between August 1999 and January 2000. Waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio were indicators of abdominal fat, adjusted for total adiposity. Weight, height, w...

BACKGROUND Obesity is associated with metabolic risk factors. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, waist-hip ratio (WHR) and waist-height ratio (WHtR) are used to predict the risk of obesity related diseases. However, it has not been examined whether these four indicators can detect the clustering of metabolic risk factors in Chinese subjects. METHODS There are 772 Chinese subjects in ...

BACKGROUND Many interfering factors may reduce the reliability of waist circumference (WC) measurement in estimating the risk for chronic kidney disease (CKD) associated with obesity. Therefore, we determined the independent associations of para- and perirenal ultrasonographic fat thickness with the main markers of kidney function. METHODS A cross-sectional study was performed in 151 type-2 d...

BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies find a progressive increase in the prevalence of elevated blood pressure with increasing adipose tissue. But there is no common opinion about which effectiveness of the anthropometric measurement tools indicating general or android obesity are most important to follow up in patients with elevated blood pressures. OBJECTIVES To identify which anthropometric m...

CONTEXT Obesity is a well-established risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD), but whether regional fat distribution contributes independently to risk remains unclear. OBJECTIVE To compare waist-hip ratio (WHR) and waist circumference in determining risk of CHD in women. DESIGN AND SETTING Prospective cohort study among US female registered nurses participating in the Nurses' Health St...

The relationship of body mass index (BMI), conicity index (CI) and waist circumference to four coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors (systolic and diastolic blood pressures, total cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels) was examined in urban (n = 110) and rural (n = 102) men aged > or = 20 years, drawn from the 'Reddy' population of Southern Andhra Pradesh, India....