Christoforidis A, Dimitriadou M, Papadopolou E, Stilpnopoulou D, Katzos G, Athanassiou-Metaxa M
1 Paediatric Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Hippokratio Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Hippokratia. 2011 Apr;15(2):141-6.
Body Mass Index (BMI) offers a simple and reasonable measure of obesity that, with the use of the appropriate reference, can help in the early detection of children with weight problems. Our aim was to compare the two most commonly used international BMI references and the national Greek BMI reference in identifying Greek children being overweight and obese.
A group of 1557 children (820 girls and 737 boys, mean age: 11.42 ± 3.51 years) were studied. Weight and height was measured using standard methods, and BMI was calculated. Overweight and obesity were determined using the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) standards, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BMI-forage curves and the most recent Greek BMI-for-age curves.
RESULTS showed that the IOTF's cut-off limits identifies a significantly higher prevalence of overweight (22.4%) compared with both the CDC's (11.8%, p=0.03) and the Greek's (7.4%, p=0.002) cut-off limits. However, the prevalence of obesity was generally increased when it was determined using the CDC's cut-off limits (13.9%) compared to the prevalence calculated with both the IOTF's (6.5%, p=0.05) and the Greek's (6.9%, n.s.) cut off limits.
The use of the national Greek reference standards for BMI underestimates the true prevalence of overweight and obesity. On the contrary, both the IOTF and the CDC standards, although independently, detect an increased number of overweight and obese children and thus they should be adopted in the clinical practice for an earlier identification and a timelier intervention.
体重指数（BMI）提供了一种简单且合理的肥胖衡量方法，通过使用适当的参考标准，有助于早期发现有体重问题的儿童。我们的目的是比较两种最常用的国际BMI参考标准与希腊国家BMI参考标准，以识别超重和肥胖的希腊儿童。
对一组1557名儿童（820名女孩和737名男孩，平均年龄：11.42±3.51岁）进行了研究。使用标准方法测量体重和身高，并计算BMI。超重和肥胖是根据国际肥胖特别工作组（IOTF）标准、美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）的BMI年龄曲线以及最新的希腊BMI年龄曲线来确定的。
结果显示，与CDC（11.8%，p=0.03）和希腊（7.4%，p=0.002）的临界值相比，IOTF的临界值所确定的超重患病率显著更高（22.4%）。然而，与使用IOTF（6.5%，p=0.05）和希腊（6.9%，无显著差异）的临界值计算出的肥胖患病率相比，使用CDC的临界值确定的肥胖患病率总体上有所增加（13.9%）。
使用希腊国家BMI参考标准会低估超重和肥胖的真实患病率。相反，IOTF和CDC标准虽然相互独立，但都能检测出更多超重和肥胖儿童，因此在临床实践中应采用它们以便更早地识别并及时进行干预。
