Objective: To assess the relationship between five anthropometric indicators, which includes body mass index (BMI), weight-to-height ratio (WHtR), a body shape index (ABSI), ABSI-adolescents, and body roundness index (BRI) in Chinese children and adolescents, and select which could better predict cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs).Methods: Cross-sectional study with 1,587 participants aged 3 to 17 years. Five anthropometric indicators were calculated according to weight, height and waist circumference (WC). Anthropometric measurements and laboratory indicators were used to diagnose CMRFs, which included hypertension, dyslipidemia, impaired fasting glucose and abdominal obesity. Partial correlation analysis was used to evaluate the relationship among anthropometric indicators, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) were used to compare the predict ability of each anthropometric indicators, the cut-off value, sensitivity, specificity and Youden Index of each indicator were calculated.Results: In 3-6 years old children, ABSI-adolescent positively correlated with WC (r=0.727, P<0.001), BMI (r=0.218, P<0.001) and WHtR (r=0.752, P<0.001), and in 7-17 years old participants, the correlation coefficients increased to 0.842, 0.563 and 0.850 (P<0.001), respectively. BRI were strong correlated with BMI, WHtR and ABSI-adolescents in both age group (P<0.001). In 3-6 years group, the ROC analysis showed that BMI and ABSI were significantly better in identifying hypertension in both genders, WHtR and BRI were significantly better in identifying abdominal obesity in girls, but all of them were failed in identifying dyslipidemia and hyperglycemia. In 7-17 years group, WHtR and BRI were significantly better in identifying hypertension, dyslipidemia, abdominal obesity in both genders, BMI and ABSI performed better in identifying hyperglycemia in girls. Conclusions:In Chinese children aged 3-6 years, there is no indicator performed best in all the CMRFs, in 7-17 years old teenagers, WHtR and BRI can be recommended to identify hypertension, dyslipidemia, abdominal obesity and clustered CMRFs in both genders. However, ABSI showed weak discriminative power.

Background: Tri-ponderal mass index (TMI) has been reported to be a more accurate estimate of body fat than body mass index (BMI). This study aims to compare the effectiveness of TMI and BMI in identifying hypertension, dyslipidemia, impaired fasting glucose (IFG), abdominal obesity, and clustered cardio-metabolic risk factors (CMRFs) in 3-to 17-year-old children. Methods: A total of 1587 children aged 3 to 17 years were included. Logistic regression was used to evaluate correlations between BMI and TMI. Area under the curves (AUCs) were used to compare discriminative capability among indicators. BMI was converted to BMI-z scores, and accuracy was compared by false-positive rate, false-negative rate, and total misclassification rate. Results: Among children aged 3 to 17 years, the mean TMI was 13.57 ± 2.50 kg/m 3 for boys and 13.3 ± 2.33 kg/m 3 for girls. Odds ratios (ORs) of TMI for hypertension, dyslipidemia, abdominal obesity, and clustered CMRFs ranged from 1.13 to 3.15, higher than BMI, whose ORs ranged from 1.08 to 2.98. AUCs showed similar ability of TMI (AUC: 0.83) and BMI (AUC: 0.85) in identifying clustered CMRFs. For abdominal obesity and hypertension, the AUC of TMI was 0.92 and 0.64, respectively, which was significantly better than that of BMI, 0.85 and 0.61. AUCs of TMI for dyslipidemia and IFG were 0.58 and 0.49. When 85th and 95th of TMI were set as thresholds, total misclassification rates of TMI for clustered CMRFs ranged from 6.5% to 16.4%, which was not significantly different from that of BMI-z scores standardized according to World Health Organization criteria. Conclusions: TMI was found to have equal or even better effectiveness in comparison with BMI in identifying hypertension, abdominal obesity, and clustered CMRFs TMI was more stable than BMI in 3-to 17-year-old children, while it failed to identify dyslipidemia and IFG. It is worth considering the use of TMI for screening CMRFs in children and adolescents.