Original articleLarge Waist but Low Body Mass Index: The Metabolic Syndrome in Australian Aboriginal Children
Section snippets
Methods
The recruitment and follow-up of this Aboriginal Birth Cohort has been described in detail presviously.15 In brief, 686 of 1238 Aboriginal children born at the Royal Darwin Hospital between January 1987 and March 1990 were recruited into the cohort. There were no significant differences in the mean birth weight, birth weight frequencies, or sex ratio between those recruited and not recruited.15 The Royal Darwin Hospital is the designated hospital for routine newborn deliveries within the Darwin
Results
A total of 489 of the original cohort of 570 from the Darwin Health Region (86%) were seen in follow-up examination. The remaining children were either not traced or not available for reexamination at the time of follow-up. Demographic, clinical, and metabolic characteristics of the cohort participants are given in Table I. The cohort's mean age was 11.5 years (range, 8.8 to 13.8 years), and it was 52% male. Fasting lipid profile and insulin and glucose levels were available for 258
Discussion
We found a high rate of MetS (14%) in our cohort of Australian Aboriginal children. This finding is unexpected in view of the relative underweight nature of this cohort, as indicated by a mean BMI z-score <0. The prevalence of overweight (6.4%) and obesity (4.9%) also was low in this cohort. This contrasts with an estimated prevalence of 4% for MetS and 15% for obesity in US adolescents using the same definitions as we used in the present study.12
Some 70% of the cohort participants had at least
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Supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Colonial Foundation Trust and the Channel 7 Research Foundation of SA Inc.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.