Dyslipidemia without Obesity in Indigenous Argentinean Children Living at High Altitude The Journal of Pediatrics, 06/08/2012

Hirschler V et al. – Anthropometric markers were not an acceptable predictor for National Cholesterol Education Program cutoffs for dyslipidemia in San Antonio de los Cobres (SAC) children. Longitudinal studies should determine if SAC children are at high risk for cardiovascular diseases because of genetic background.

• Data were collected cross-sectionally from BMI, WC, blood pressure, Tanner scale, glucose, lipids, and insulin.
• Dyslipidemia was defined by the National Cholesterol Education Program and American Heart Association.

• The mean ages were 10.6 ± 3.0 and 9.5 ± 2.0 years in SAC vs BA children. Of the 330 SAC children, 15 (4.5%) were overweight and 12 (3.6%) obese, and of the 603 BA, 97 (16.1%) were overweight and 82 (13.6%) obese per Centers for Disease Control.
• There was a significantly higher prevalence of high triglycerides (28.8% vs 3.5%) and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (30.0% vs 5.5%) in SAC vs BA children.
• The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve in predicting high triglycerides were BMI = 0.55 (95% CI, 0.48-0.62; P = .15) in SAC and BMI = 0.65 (95% CI, 0.52-0.77; P = .02) in BA children.
• Similar results from the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve were obtained when low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol was used, indicating that BMI was not a significant predictor for dyslipidemia in SAC children.
• When BMI was replaced by WC and WC/height, results were similar.