Use of Register of Low-Birth-Weight Infants for the Evaluation of Adiposity Indices

Recently Roland-Cachera and al. established reference curves for the adiposity index W/H2 between 1 month and 16 years of life. This adiposity index is reliable method to assess indirectly the development of fat mass in infants. Moreover, Hiller and Hassanein (1) established reference curves for another adiposity index W/H3 at birth according to gestational age. Villar and al. (2) suggested that W/H3 at birth correlates with subsequent growth in weight and height among hypotrophic full term infants- References graphs for W/H2 index are only available after the first month of life and index W/H3 for neonatal period. We have studied the development of the adiposity index W/H2 between 3 and 18 months of life among low-birth-weight (L.B.W) infants (less than 2500 g) according to their weight and W/H3 index at birth.