Socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ethnicity as determinants of body fat distribution for Guatemalan children

Abstract

The distribution of subcutaneous fat at the triceps and subscapular skinfold sites is described for four groups of children living in Guatemala. These groups are high socioeconomic status (SES) children of Ladino (mixed Spanish and Indian) ancestry, high SES children of European ancestry, low SES Ladino children, and very low SES Indian children. The method of Healy and Tanner (1981) is used, employing regression and principal components analysis of log transformed skinfold values to divide "fatness" into two uncorrelated variables: size (amount of fat) and shape (fat pattern). Significant differences exist between groups in size, with lower SES groups having less fat than higher SES groups. No significant difference in fat pattern exists between the high SES Ladino and high SES European children. Significant differences do exist between the high SES groups and the low SES groups. The relative amount of subscapular fat increases from the high SES Ladinos and high SES Europeans, to the low SES Ladinos, to the very low SES Indians. In the high SES European and high SES Ladino samples, girls have significantly more arm fat than boys. There is no significant difference in fat patterning between boys and girls in the two low SES samples. Finally, the relative amount of subscapular fat tends to increase with age in all four samples. These results indicate that fatness and fat patterning are independent anatomical characteristics, SES influences fat patterning; low SES children of both Ladino and Indian ancestry show greater reductions in arm fat than in trunk fat compared to high SES children, sexual dimorphism in fat patterning is SES dependent.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Relationship of disease characteristics and nutritional status to patterns of growth in children with Crohn disease

“…These findings appear to contrast with those reported by Spender and co-workers (1988) on children with cerebral palsy and those reported by Bogin and co-workers on Guatemalan children of lower socioeconomic status (Bogin and MacVean 1981a,b;Bogin and Sullivan, 1986). These workers have found that the triceps site shows differential depletion when compared to the subscapular site, associated with chronic malnutrition in their samples.…”

Fat distribution in relation to sex and socioeconomic status in children 4–19 years

“…The higher amount of central fat in the lower SES sample appears also in samples in Guatemala (Bogin and MacVean, 1981;Bogin and Sullivan, 1986) and India (Johnston et al, 1995). In the present sample, however, the differences are evident only in girls and, in contrast, in a sample from San Antonio, Texas (Malina, 1996), only Mexican American males of higher social class revealed a more android pattern (according to waist:hip ratio).…”

“…Research on twins (Selby et al, 1990) suggests that fat distribution is determined more by genetic factors than by habits (physical exercise being considered the main variable for defining habits and lifestyle). However, the varied environments defined by socioeconomic status (SES) may also have a relationship with fat distribution (Bogin and Sullivan, 1986). Among an English population of Caucasian origin, children of employees had more fat at the triceps site than children of parents with other professions; further, the number of persons in the household had a positive correlation with the amount of fat at the triceps site (Rona and Chinn, 1987).…”

Secular change in long bone length and proportion in the United States, 1800-1970

“…This method of separating size and shape is preferable to the residual methods often used in growth research (e.g., Bogin and Sullivan, 1986) because it removes isometric size (for a full discussion of ratio and residual methods, see Jungers et al, 1995). The shape variables are therefore not necessarily uncorrelated with size, as required by residual methods.…”