Body composition assessment in childhood and adolescent obesity

Paediatric obesity is a complex phenotype that results from the influence of genes, development, and environment. To promote obesity, both genetic and environmental factors must influence one or more components of energy balance. Because obesity may develop from very small energy imbalances over time, it is necessary to develop procedures to assess energy intake, energy, expenditure and body composition with a great deal of precision and accuracy to detect small changes. Currently overweight and obesity are defined on the basis of age-genetic percentiles of Body Mass Index (BMI). However, measurement issues might be partially responsible for the results. The central aim of our presentation is to discuss methods for body composition assessment that may provide new insights into the clinical practicality of paediatric body composition measurements techniques that are used in the research setting. Second we will analyze simple and practical measurements that could be used in office or clinical setting. Finally, we will discuss different measurements used in epidemiological studies. We conclude that is fundamental to search for more precise and sophisticated measures in order to identify potentially overweight/obese children as earlier possible.