Editorial: Towards a simplified definition of childhood obesity? A focus on the extended IOTF references

摘要

The WHO growth standards, released in 2006 for assessing the growth of children from birth to 5 years of age, were created from samples of healthy breastfed children from six countries around the world (5), and were intended to represent a 'standard' of physiological growth rather than a descriptive 'reference'. To extend these growth curves to school-age children and adolescence, references for 5- to 19-year-olds were developed using data from US surveys (6). In addition, various other countries have constructed their own references, primarily for clinical use, as they are more representative of the country's children. The adoption of BMI to define overweight -and obesity and the availability of BMI reference curves both represent progress, but the multiplicity of references, and hence definitions, makes it difficult to choose between them (7).