Body Composition Profile and Nutritional Status of Adolescents with Overweight or Obesity Using Usual and Unusual Indicators

In recent decades, overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence have been one of the most important challenges in public health. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to further explore the body composition and nutritional status of adolescents with overweight or obesity using usual and unusual indicators. Participants were 90 adolescents between 10 and 18 years of age belonging to a multiprofessional obesity treatment program, who were evaluated with multifrequency bioelectrical impedance to determine their nutritional status as overweight, with obesity or with severe obesity and body composition. Analysis of variance, correlation, and linear regression adjusted for confounding variables were used to analyze the data. There were significant differences between the three groups according to their BMI in lean and fat mass as the usual indicators (p<0.05). The same was observed for lean and fat mass indexes, and for lean-to-fat ratio (p<0.01) which are unusual indicators. Additionally, positive and significant correlations were observed between usual and unusual variables (r = 0.5 to 0.89; p<0.05). At the same time, lean and fat mass mainly tended to increase with a higher BMI in adolescents (p<0.05). It is concluded that the comparison and associations between the usual and unusual variables provided important findings on the evaluation of adolescents with overweight, obesity, or severe obesity. It should be considered that this study was cross-sectional and did not indicate cause-effect between the variables.