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Neck circumference as a complementary measure to identify risk of excess body mass in children younger than 2 years old

Objective

To evaluate the effectiveness of neck circumference (NC) as a measure for assessing risk of excess body mass in children aged 13-24 months.

Methods

From a total of 435 children born in 2012 in a public maternity hospital of Joinville, Brazil, 279 participated in a new investigation 1 year later. Body mass, length and NC were collected in their homes between March 2013 and March 2014. The best cutoff value for identifying overweight/obese children using the body mass index (BMI) was determined by the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve), according to gender and the age groups: 13-15 months, 16-19 months and 20-24 months.

Results

NC was positive and significant. The NC cutoff points increased with increasing age group in boys (23.6, 23.9 and 24.0 cm) and girls (23.4, 23.5 and 23.6 cm), respectively, for the 13-15, 16-19 and 20-24 age groups. See Tables 1, 2, 3, 4.

Table 1 General characteristics of the children according to BMI category and sex, Joinville, SC, Brazil, 2013-2014.
Table 2 Relationship between neck circumference (NC) and age, body mass, length and BMI by sex, Joinville, SC, Brazil, 2013-2014.
Table 3 Spearman correlation coefficients (rho) of the relation between BMI and neck circumference (NC) by age and sex, Joinville, SC, Brazil, 2013-2014
Table 4 Area under the curve (AUC), frequency (n), optimal cutoff points, sensitivities and specificities for neck circumference (NC) associated with excess body mass in three age groups of boys and girls, Joinville, SC, Brazil, 2013-2014.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that NC can also be used to screen risk of excess body mass and upper fat distribution in children aged 13-24 months. However, further studies with a larger sample in order to complement our data will be required.

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Santos, D.d., Farias, A.A., Kroll, C. et al. Neck circumference as a complementary measure to identify risk of excess body mass in children younger than 2 years old. Crit Care 19 (Suppl 2), P31 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/cc14683

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/cc14683

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