scholarly journals Percentiles and Principal Component Analysis of Physical Fitness From a Big Sample of Children and Adolescents Aged 6-18 Years: The DAFIS Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliseo Iglesias-Soler ◽  
María Rúa-Alonso ◽  
Jessica Rial-Vázquez ◽  
Jose Ramón Lete-Lasa ◽  
Iván Clavel ◽  
...  

Assessing physical fitness has emerged as a proxy of the health status of children and adolescents and therefore as relevant from a public health point of view. DAFIS is a project included in Plan Galicia Saudable (Healthy Galicia Plan) of the regional government of Galicia (Spain). DAFIS consists of an on-line software devoted to record the results of a standard physical fitness protocol carried out as a part of the physical education curriculum. The aims of this study were: to obtain normative values of physical fitness of the Galician school population evaluated in the DAFIS project, and to identify a reduced number of components and tests able to capture a significant amount of the variability in the physical fitness of children and adolescents. From an initial sample of 27784 records, 15287 cases (7543 males, 7744 females) were considered after filtering. Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape were used for obtaining percentile curves and tables for each sex. Furthermore, a principal components analysis was performed, selecting the number of components by applying the Kaiser’s rule and selecting a subset of variables considering the correlation between each variable and the components. Percentile curves and normative values are reported for each test and sex. Physical fitness was better in boys than in girls throughout age groups, except for flexibility that was consistently higher in girls. Two main components were detected throughout age groups: the first one representing body composition and partially cardiorespiratory fitness and the second one muscular fitness. For boys and girls, waist to height ratio had the highest correlations with the first component in four out of six age groups. The highest correlation with the second component, was most frequently observed for the handgrip test both in boys and girls (four out of six age groups). This study provides evidence about the utility of school community actions like DAFIS aimed to track the health-related fitness of children and adolescents. The results suggest that fat mass distribution (i.e., waist to height ratio and waist circumference) and muscular performance (mainly handgrip) concentrate a high proportion physical fitness variance.

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Md Rizwanul Ahsan ◽  
Sabrina Makbul ◽  
Probir Kumar Sarkar

Background: Now a days unhealthy lifestyle primarily responsible for the dramatic increase obesity among children and adolescents. Objective: The purpose of the study is to see the effects of a multidisciplinary lifestyle intervention to reduce obese children and adolescents. The main outcome was cardiometabolic risk based on the waist-to-height ratio (WHTR) measurement. Secondary outcomes were (1) changes in body composition; (2) adherence to a Mediterranean diet; and (3) physical performance. Methods: The study involved 64 overweight/obese children or adolescents conducted at Dhaka Shishu Hospital from October 2017 to September 2018. The intervention was multidisciplinary including nutrition, exercise, and psychological aspects based on a family-based approach; it was delivered for six months for children and three months for adolescents. Before and after the intervention, several anthropometric measures height, body weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and body composition, cardiometabolic risk index waist-to-height ratio (WHTR), and dietary habits of the participants and their families were evaluated. In addition, a set of functional motor fitness tests was performed to evaluate physical performance measures. Results: After the intervention both children and adolescents showed a significant reduction in body weight, BMI, waist circumference, fat mass, and WHTR index and an improvement of fat-free mass, adherence to the Mediterranean diet, and physical fitness performance. Conclusion: A short term family-based multidisciplinary approach is effective in ameliorating the health status, dietary habits, and physical performance in children and adolescents. DS (Child) H J 2019; 35(2) : 111-118


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (8) ◽  
pp. 983-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Asif ◽  
Muhammad Aslam ◽  
Saima Altaf ◽  
Sajid Mustafa

AbstractObjectivesChildren from different countries and with different ethnic backgrounds have a distinct pattern of central fat deposition. Therefore, it is essential to develop population-specific percentiles of waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and waist-to-height ratio exponent (WHtR (exp)) for the evaluation of central obesity. The objective of this study was to develop age-and-gender-specific smoothed WC and WHtR percentile curves for the Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2–18 years.MethodsA cross-sectional data-set from a multi-ethnic anthropometric survey was considered. A sample of 10,668 healthy subjects (boys = 51.92%; and girls = 48.08%), aged 2–18 years was studied. Height (cm) and WC (cm) of each subject was measured under standard procedure and WHtR & WHtR (exp) were calculated. Age-and-gender-specific smoothed curves were obtained using the lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) method and compared with percentile curves obtained from different countries.ResultsExcept few early ages, the WC values increased with age in both sexes. Both boys and girls had approximately similar WC during 6–11 years of age and after age of 11, the boys had larger WC than the girls had. For WHtR, the centile curves showed a continuous decrease by 16 years of age and then increased gradually. WHtR of the girls in various ages were having similar or higher than those of the boys. In comparison of WC 50th and 90th percentiles with other countries, it was found that except few ages, the Pakistani children had larger WC than the other reference populations and the results of WHtR were also comparable to the other nations.ConclusionsWe present new reference data of WC, WHtR and WHtR (exp) using a representative sample of the Pakistani children aged 2–18 years. These reference values can be used provisionally for early detection of central obesity and its associated risks in the Pakistani children.


2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (22) ◽  
pp. 1445-1456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant R Tomkinson ◽  
Kevin D Carver ◽  
Frazer Atkinson ◽  
Nathan D Daniell ◽  
Lucy K Lewis ◽  
...  

ObjectiveTo develop sex-specific and age-specific normative values for the nine Eurofit tests in European children and adolescents aged 9–17 years.MethodsA systematic review was undertaken to identify papers that explicitly reported descriptive results for at least one of nine Eurofit tests (measuring balance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, muscular power, flexibility, speed, speed-agility and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF)) on children and adolescents. Data were included on apparently healthy (free from known disease/injury) children and adolescents aged 9–17 years. Following harmonisation for methodological variation where appropriate, pseudodata were generated using Monte Carlo simulation, with population-weighted sex-specific and age-specific normative centiles generated using the Lambda Mu Sigma (LMS) method. Sex-specific and age-specific differences were expressed as standardised differences in means, with the percentage of children and adolescents with healthy CRF estimated at the sex-age level.ResultsNorms were displayed as tabulated centiles and as smoothed centile curves for the nine Eurofit tests. The final dataset included 2 779 165 results on children and adolescents from 30 European countries, extracted from 98 studies. On average, 78% of boys (95% CI 72% to 85%) and 83% of girls (95% CI 71% to 96%) met the standards for healthy CRF, with the percentage meeting the standards decreasing with age. Boys performed substantially (standardised differences >0.2) better than girls on muscular strength, muscular power, muscular endurance, speed-agility and CRF tests, but worse on the flexibility test. Physical fitness generally improved at a faster rate in boys than in girls, especially during the teenage years.ConclusionThis study provides the largest and most geographically representative sex-specific and age-specific European normative values for children and adolescents, which have utility for health and fitness screening, profiling, monitoring and surveillance.


Obesity ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 748-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weili Yan ◽  
He Bingxian ◽  
Yao Hua ◽  
Dai Jianghong ◽  
Cui Jun ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 107 (9) ◽  
pp. 1629-1634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Jiang ◽  
Ya-lan Dou ◽  
Feng Xiong ◽  
Lan Zhang ◽  
Gao-hui Zhu ◽  
...  

PLoS ONE ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. e0149351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luís B. Sardinha ◽  
Diana A. Santos ◽  
Analiza M. Silva ◽  
Anders Grøntved ◽  
Lars B. Andersen ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (11) ◽  
pp. 1530-1539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart C. Bongers ◽  
Sanne I. de Vries ◽  
Joyce Obeid ◽  
Stef van Buuren ◽  
Paul J.M. Helders ◽  
...  

Background The Steep Ramp Test (SRT), a feasible, reliable, and valid exercise test on a cycle ergometer, may be more appealing for use in children in daily clinical practice than the traditional cardiopulmonary exercise test because of its short duration, its resemblance to children's daily activity patterns, and the fact that it does not require respiratory gas analysis. Objective The aim of the present study was to provide sex- and age-related normative values for SRT performance in Dutch white children and adolescents who were healthy and 8 to 19 years old. Design This was a cross-sectional, observational study. Methods A total of 252 Dutch white children and adolescents, 118 boys (mean age=13.4 years, SD=3.0) and 134 girls (mean age=13.4 years, SD=2.9), performed the SRT (work rate increment of 10, 15, or 20 W·10 s−1, depending on body height) to voluntary exhaustion to assess peak work rate (WRpeak). Normative values are presented as reference centiles developed by use of generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. Results Peak work rate correlated highly with age (r=.915 and r=.811), body mass (r=.870 and r=.850), body height (r=.922 and r=.896), body surface area (r=.906 and r=.885), and fat free mass (r=.930 and r=.902) in boys and girls, respectively. The reference curves demonstrated an almost linear increase in WRpeak with age in boys, even when WRpeak was normalized for body mass. In contrast, absolute WRpeak in girls increased constantly until the age of approximately 13 years, when it started to level off. Peak work rate normalized for body mass in girls showed only a slight increase with age until 14 years of age, when a slight decrease in relative WRpeak was observed. Limitations The sample may not have been entirely representative of the Dutch population. Conclusions The present study provides sex- and age-related normative values for SRT performance in terms of both absolute WRpeak and relative WRpeak, thereby facilitating the interpretation of SRT results by clinicians and researchers.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document