Body composition from birth to 6 mo of age in Ethiopian infants: reference data obtained by air-displacement plethysmography.

BACKGROUND Data on body composition in infancy may improve the understanding of the relation between variability in fetal and infant growth and disease risk through the life course. Although new assessment techniques have recently become available, body composition is rarely described in infants from low-income settings. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to provide reference data for fat mass (FM) and fat-free mass (FFM) from birth to the age of 6 mo from an urban African population. DESIGN We conducted a prospective cohort study among infants from Jimma, Ethiopia. FM and FFM were measured at birth and at 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 6 mo of age with air-displacement plethysmography (ADP) validated against a stable isotope method in a subsample. Reference charts and reference tables with z scores and percentiles for FM, FFM, FM index (FMI; in kg/m(2)), and FFM index (FFMI: in kg/m(2)) were constructed with the lambda-mu-sigma method. RESULTS Body composition growth charts were based on a total of 2026 measurements of body composition obtained from 378 infants. FM and FMI gain progressed in a logarithmic-shaped curve and variation increased with increasing age, whereas FFM increased in an almost linear manner with a minor deceleration at around 3 mo of age. The FFMI curve showed a very modest exponential increase with age. CONCLUSIONS By presenting z scores and centile reference charts for an apparently healthy urban Ethiopian infant population, this study represents a first step toward providing reference data on FM and FFM for an urban African context, which is important for future clinical care and research. This study was registered at www.controlled-trials.com as ISRCTN46718296.

[1]  T. Cole,et al.  Body-composition reference data for simple and reference techniques and a 4-component model: a new UK reference child. , 2012, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[2]  J. Wells.  Ethnic variability in adiposity, thrifty phenotypes and cardiometabolic risk: addressing the full range of ethnicity, including those of mixed ethnicity , 2012, Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.

[3]  J. Wells,et al.  Differences in body composition between infants of South Asian and European ancestry: the London Mother and Baby Study , 2012, International journal of epidemiology.

[4]  D. Darmaun,et al.  Air-displacement plethysmography for determining body composition in neonates: validation using live piglets , 2012, Pediatric Research.

[5]  J. Wells.  Ecogeographical associations between climate and human body composition: analyses based on anthropometry and skinfolds. , 2012, American journal of physical anthropology.

[6]  K. Michaelsen,et al.  Fat and Fat-Free Mass at Birth: Air Displacement Plethysmography Measurements on 350 Ethiopian Newborns , 2011, Pediatric Research.

[7]  D. Fields,et al.  Longitudinal Body Composition Data in Exclusively Breast‐Fed Infants: A Multicenter Study , 2011, Obesity.

[8]  E. Forsum,et al.  Fat‐free mass hydration in newborns: assessment and implications for body composition studies , 2011, Acta paediatrica.

[9]  P. Colditz,et al.  Body Composition From Birth to 4.5 Months in Infants Born to Non-Obese Women , 2010, Pediatric Research.

[10]  E. Forsum,et al.  Body composition in full‐term healthy infants measured with air displacement plethysmography at 1 and 12 weeks of age , 2010, Acta paediatrica.

[11]  M. Giannì,et al.  Neonatal Period: Body Composition Changes in Breast-Fed Full-Term Newborns , 2009, Neonatology.

[12]  T. Darch,et al.  Body composition by 2H dilution in Gambian infants: comparison with UK infants and evaluation of simple prediction methods , 2009, British Journal of Nutrition.

[13]  E. Ferriolli,et al.  Deuterium Equilibrium Time in Saliva of Newborn Infants , 2009, Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition.

[14]  Linda Richter,et al.  Maternal and child undernutrition: consequences for adult health and human capital , 2008, The Lancet.

[15]  J. Wells,et al.  Is body composition important for paediatricians? , 2007, Archives of Disease in Childhood.

[16]  J. Montani,et al.  The thrifty ‘catch-up fat’ phenotype: its impact on insulin sensitivity during growth trajectories to obesity and metabolic syndrome , 2006, International Journal of Obesity.

[17]  J. Wells,et al.  Measuring body composition , 2005, Archives of Disease in Childhood.

[18]  Yan Liu,et al.  Validation of a new pediatric air-displacement plethysmograph for assessing body composition in infants. , 2004, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[19]  S. Aitkens,et al.  A New Air Displacement Plethysmograph for the Measurement of Body Composition in Infants , 2003, Pediatric Research.

[20]  C. Yajnik,et al.  Neonatal anthropometry: the thin–fat Indian baby. The Pune Maternal Nutrition Study , 2003, International Journal of Obesity.

[21]  T. Cole,et al.  Birth weight and environmental heat load: a between-population analysis. , 2002, American journal of physical anthropology.

[22]  J. Wells.  Thermal environment and human birth weight. , 2002, Journal of theoretical biology.

[23]  J. Wells,et al.  A critique of the expression of paediatric body composition data , 2001, Archives of disease in childhood.

[24]  W. Coward,et al.  Energy expenditure of stunted and nonstunted boys and girls living in the shantytowns of São Paulo, Brazil. , 2000, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[25]  T J Cole,et al.  British 1990 growth reference centiles for weight, height, body mass index and head circumference fitted by maximum penalized likelihood. , 1998, Statistics in medicine.

[26]  J. Wells,et al.  Calculation of total body water in infancy. , 1994, European journal of clinical nutrition.

[27]  W. Siri.  Body composition from fluid spaces and density: analysis of methods. 1961. , 1993, Nutrition.

[28]  J. Khoury,et al.  New Ballard Score, expanded to include extremely premature infants. , 1991, The Journal of pediatrics.

[29]  S. Heymsfield,et al.  Height-normalized indices of the body's fat-free mass and fat mass: potentially useful indicators of nutritional status. , 1990, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[30]  K. Krasovec,et al.  Toward consistency in breastfeeding definitions. , 1990, Studies in family planning.

[31]  R. Gibson.  Principles of Nutritional Assessment , 1990 .

[32]  P. Deurenberg,et al.  Body composition in children: proposal for a method for calculating body fat percentage from total body density or skinfold-thickness measurements. , 1989, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[33]  T. Lohman.  Assessment of Body Composition in Children. , 1989, Pediatric exercise science.

[34]  F. Haschke,et al.  Body composition of reference children from birth to age 10 years. , 1982, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[35]  J. Ballard,et al.  A simplified score for assessment of fetal maturation of newly born infants. , 1979, The Journal of pediatrics.

[36]  A. Keys,et al.  DENSITOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF BODY COMPOSITION: REVISION OF SOME QUANTITATIVE ASSUMPTIONS * , 1963, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[37]  R. Ehrenkranz.  Body-composition assessment in infancy: air-displacement plethysmography compared with a reference 4-compartment model , 2008 .

[38]  H. Pan,et al.  WHO child growth standards: length/height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length, weight-for-height and body mass index-for-age , 2006 .

[39]  T J Cole,et al.  Smoothing reference centile curves: the LMS method and penalized likelihood. , 1992, Statistics in medicine.

[40]  Josef Brozek,et al.  Techniques for measuring body composition , 1961 .