Nutrition assessment and indicators of visceral fat and subcutaneous fat in children with Down syndrome

Abstract

Background

There are only few publications related to body composition in Down syndrome (DS).

Objective

Evaluate the relationship between indicators of nutrition assessment by Catalan references and CDC/NCHS and indicators of body composition, and compare the concordance between weight/height index (WHI), body mass index/age (BMIa) and weight/age (WA) to evaluate nutritional status in children with DS.

Materials and methods

Analytical cross-sectional study in which 40 children with DS, 20 girls and 20 boys between 3 and 13 years old were studied. Anthropometric measurements were performed to obtain indicators of nutrition assessment as WHI, BMIa and WA and indicators of subcutaneous and visceral fat and muscular compartment. Correlation tests and Kappa index were evaluated to establish relationship and agreement respectively.

Results

The nutrition assessment in children with DS shows that 60% presents overweight and obesity according to BMIa, and 75% according to WHI. Correlation analysis indicates that waist circumference, fat brachial area, % fat mass by Slaughter and Weststrate and Deurenberg have a high positive correlation with BMIa (P-value < 0.05). A logistic regression model showed that no indicator of fat mass is clinically significant in predicting an increase of the indicator WA. It was determined that the BMIa and WHI indicators have a higher concordance (Kappa = 0.59; P = 0.0000).

Conclusions

We determined a high correlation between nutritional diagnosis (BMIa and WA) with indicators of visceral fat (waist circumference) and subcutaneous (% fat mass and fat brachial area) in children with DS. A greater agreement was found between indicators of BMIa and WA suggesting that they are optimal for assessing the nutritional status.