Abstract
Background: Japanese Anthropometric Reference Data (JARD) 2001 for children has not been established. The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) to provide anthropometric measurements for Japanese healthy children, (2) to correlate measures with age as a predictor of reference data, (3) to estimate of stature from the measurements for children.
Methods: The analytic sample for this study was based on the 2005-2008 examined sample of 475 survey participants. Anthropometric measurements included arm circumference (AC), triceps skinfold thickness (TSF), knee height (KH), calculated arm muscle circumference (AMC) and arm muscle area (AMA). Pearson product-correlation coefficient analysis was used to relationship between each measurement and age. Regression analysis using Stepwise method evaluated the significance of age, KH, AC and TSF as a predictor of weight and height for children as an independent variable.
Result: Gender-Specific frequencies for the 5 measurements were created by age group. All of the data significantly correlated with age. The age was a positive independent predictor for the estimation of stature with KH, AC and TSF for children.
Conclusion: The first anthropometric data was provided for Japanese healthy children by sex and age. All of the data was correlated with age. The stature was estimated from age associated with growth and other anthropometric predictors. Further studies need more reliable sample size to evaluate the reliability of the estimates.
