OBJECTIVE: To identify the age of adiposity rebound and the value of its associated BMI and examine their association with BMI at ages 18 and 21 y for males and females. DESIGN: A longitudinal study of a large cohort of people born in Dunedin, New Zealand between 1972 ± 1973. SUBJECTS: Four hundred and seventy-four males and 448 females aged between birth and 21 y. MEASUREMENTS: BMI was derived from measurements of weight and height made when the participants were born and at intervals from age 3 ± 21 y. RESULTS: When a random coef®cients model was ®tted to the data for those who had ®ve or more measures of BMI between age 3 and age 18 y, adiposity rebound occurred at 6.0 y of age for boys and 5.6 y for girls. The values of BMI associated with these were 15.7 kgam 2 for boys and 15.5 kgam 2 for girls. The correlations between age at adiposity rebound and BMI at ages 18 and 21 y were between 70.72 and 70.65 for boys and 70.59 and 70.47 for girls. These were higher than those derived from ®tting individual curves or from deriving the adiposity rebound from data collected up to age 11 y. The correlation between BMI at age 7 y and BMI at ages 18 and 21 y were 0.70 and 0.61 for boys and 0.56 and 0.52 for girls. The correlations between measures of skeletal maturity at age 7 y and adiposity rebound were statistically signi®cant for boys but not for girls. CONCLUSIONS: BMI in early adulthood was associated with both age of adiposity rebound and BMI at that age. As the correlations between BMI at age 7 y and BMI at ages 18 and 21 y were similar in magnitude, BMI at age 7 y may be a more practical way of predicting BMI in early adulthood.

BackgroundMeasures of central adiposity are better predictors of adverse health events than BMI. Nonetheless, BMI is more widely used in health research. One reason for this may be the limited research supporting the self-measurement of waist and hip circumference. The lack of validity studies is particularly acute in Asia. The main objective was to establish the validity of self-measurement of waist and hip circumference in a community setting and the correlation of those measures with BMI, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels.MethodsA community based, cross-sectional survey. A “healthy living expo” at a shopping mall in a rural town on peninsular Malaysia One hundred and thirty six (136) individuals volunteered to participate in the study, 125 of whom met the inclusion criteria. The ethnic distribution of the participants was 80% Chinese, 17% Malay and 3% Indian. Most participants were female (60%), with participants’ ages ranging from 18 to 78 years (mean, 47.2). Self and assisted measurements of waist and hip were taken. Blood pressure, non-fasting blood glucose, height, and weight were also measured. Bland Altman plots and Lin’s concordance coefficient were used to measure agreement between self and assisted measures. Pearson’s correlation was used to examine the association of self and assisted measures with blood pressure, blood glucose, and BMI.ResultsThere was a downwards bias in self measured waist (-0.81 cm) and hip (-1 cm) circumferences compared with assisted measures. The concordance for the self and assisted measures of waist, hip and the ratio of the two were, respectively, .96, .93 , and .84. The correlation between measures of central adiposity and BMI, blood pressure and blood glucose were similar for self and assisted measures.ConclusionThe results provide additional support for the use of self-measurement of waist and hip circumference studies of central adiposity, but is limited by the specificity of the setting.

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