Determination of Body Composition of Children from Skinfold Measurements

Body fat measurement in adolescents: comparison of skinfold thickness equations with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry

“…In our study, Slaughter et al (1988) and Brook (1971) equations showed the lowest error and biases were not dependent on body fat. So, in spite of skinfold thickness methodology limitations described above in relation with %FM prediction at the individual level, the Brook (1971) equation could be used in female, adolescents and Slaughter et al (1988) equations in males and females to predict body fatness in epidemiological studies or in clinical settings. Slaughter et al (1988) equations have shown the best agreement when only a single set of equations must be selected for a mixed group of adolescents from both sexes: (a) TC equations: mean bias À0.06%, 95% limits of agreement 77.8%; (b) TS equations: mean bias 0.66%, 95% limits of agreement 77.7% (non significant correlations between biases and %FM).…”

“…Skinfold thickness measurements are better predictors of body fat percentage than other simple anthropometric variables or ratios such as the BMI (Sarría et al, 1998). In our study, Slaughter et al (1988) and Brook (1971) equations showed the lowest error and biases were not dependent on body fat. So, in spite of skinfold thickness methodology limitations described above in relation with %FM prediction at the individual level, the Brook (1971) equation could be used in female, adolescents and Slaughter et al (1988) equations in males and females to predict body fatness in epidemiological studies or in clinical settings.…”

“…Slaughter et al (1988) equations underestimated %FM in females but accuracy could be also improved if these equations were adjusted by adding relative bias to %FM predictions. In females, Brook's (1971) equation is the only one that did not show either significant bias or correlation between bias and %FM. For groups, as other authors have recommended (Reilly et al, 1995;Wong et al, 2000;Moreno et al, 2003), skinfold thickness equations may be used when a relative index of fatness is required rather than high accuracy measures of body composition.…”

“…Until now, other validation studies have been already carried out mainly in prepubertal children (Reilly et al, 1995;Wells et al, 1999;Bray et al, 2002;Parker et al, 2003), in a group of 72 white and 40 African-American female adolescents aged 9-17 y (Wong et al, 2000), and in 56 boys and male adolescents aged 10-14 y (Parker et al, 2003). Conclusions derived from previous reliable data have showed that skinfold thickness equations, such as those proposed by Brook (1971) and Slaughter et al (1988), predicted fatness with negligible bias in groups of children but, with respect to the individual, its accuracy and precision were poor (Reilly et al, 1995;Wells et al, 1999;Wong et al, 2000;Parker et al, 2003). To our knowledge, this is the first time that %FM predictive equations have been compared with a reference method in a large group of adolescents from both sexes; therefore, results give full information about the validity of these equations for measurement of fatness in adolescents.…”

“…There are a group of logarithmic (Durnin & Rahaman, 1967;Brook, 1971;Durnin & Womersley, 1974;Johnston et al, 1988;Deurenberg et al, 1990;Sarría et al, 1998) and linear equations (Sloan et al, 1962;Wilmore & Behnke, 1970) that predict the body density first, and then %FM from body density with any of the equations performed by Siri (1961), Lohman et al (1984) and Weststrate and Deurenberg (1989). Other groups of quadratic (Slaughter et al, 1988) and linear (Slaughter et al, 1988;Lean et al, 1996;Bray et al, 2001) equations predict %FM directly from skinfold thicknesses.…”