Abstract
Various surveys and investigations into the physical characteristics, physical fitness levels and motor abilities of children with intellectual disabilities have been published, but they are limited in scope. Little information has been generated using the New Physical Fitness Test produced by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Therefore, the present study compares the physical characteristics, physical fitness levels and motor abilities of children with intellectual disabilities with those of healthy children using the New Physical Fitness Test at a single institution (Research Center for Total Life Health and Sports Sciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo). We compared 24 children with intellectual disabilities (20 boys, age 16.0±5.5 years; 4 girls, age 13.3±3.4 years). Height, weight, body fat percentage and muscle mass varied widely among the boys; this variation was particularly remarkable for body fat percentage (range, ≤10-56%). Various factors should be addressed to maintain a moderate body composition and improve growth among children with intellectual disabilities. In normally developing children (national average), reach determined by the sit-and-reach test lengthens with age, but among children with intellectual disabilities it sometimes became longer and other times became shorter. Life factors might be involved in the broad range of individual differences among these individuals. The back muscle strength of two 13-year-old boys with intellectual disabilities differed by 85 kg, which might have been associated with differences in muscle mass, muscle-nervous system status and the status of recognition functions. Walking is a basic life skill, and people with decreased walking ability might experience difficulty with activities of daily living. The individual values for all boys and girls with intellectual disabilities in the 10-m obstacle walk in the present study were lower than the national mean for normal elderly persons, and the individual values for the 50-m dash were lower than the national mean for normal children. These findings confirmed that the motor ability of children with intellectual disabilities is impaired. Muscle strength (back muscle strength, grip strength), walking ability (10-m flat walk, 10-m obstacle walk) and running ability (50-m dash) tended to be better in both boys and girls with more muscle mass, although the differences were not significant. The large standard deviation, differing states of mind and physical status among children with intellectual disabilities suggested that understanding their individual circumstances is important for improving growth and motor ability and maintaining a moderate body composition.
