| Summary: | Objective: To analyze the predictive capacity of anthropometric indicators and their cut‐off values for dyslipidemia screening in children and adolescents.
Methods: This was a cross‐sectional study involving 1,139 children and adolescents, of both sexes, aged 6 to 18 years. Body weight, height, waist circumference (WC), and subscapular (SSF) and triceps skinfold thickness (TSF) were measured. The body mass index (BMI) and waist‐to‐height ratio (WHtR) were calculated. Children and adolescents exhibiting at least one of the following lipid alterations were defined as having dyslipidemia: elevated total cholesterol, low HDL‐C, elevated LDL‐C, and high triglyceride concentration. A receiver operating characteristic curve was constructed and the area under the curve, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated for the parameters analyzed.
Results: The prevalence of dyslipidemia was 62.1%. WHtR, WC, SSF, BMI, and TSF, in this order, presented the largest number of significant accuracies, ranging from 0.59 to 0.78. The associations of the anthropometric indicators with dyslipidemia were stronger among adolescents than among children. Significant differences between accuracies of the anthropometric indicators were only observed by the end of adolescence; the accuracy of WHtR was higher than that of SSF (p = 0.048) for females, and the accuracy of WC was higher than that of SSF (p = 0.029) and BMI (p = 0.012) for males. In general, the cut‐off values of the anthropometric predictors of dyslipidemia increased with age, except for WHtR. Sensitivity and specificity varied substantially between anthropometric indicators, ranging from 75.6‐53.5 and from 75.0‐50.0, respectively
Conclusions: The anthropometric indicators studied had little utility as screening tools for dyslipidemia, especially in children
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