Relationship of weight and height with waist circumference, body mass index and conicity index in adolescents*

Summary Obesity or overweight in adolescents are a public health issue. Waist circumference (W C) body mass in­ dex (.BMI'), and conicity index (C l) have been used to assess these conditions and the risks involved. The aim o f this study was to assess the influence o f weight and height on WC, BMI and Cl in adolescents. Student t test, ANOVA, Pearson correlations and binary correspondence were used. At 13-14 years, BMI (r = 0.89; r = 0.92) and WC (r = 0.85; r = 0.83) showed high correlations with iveight. C had a low cor­ relation with iveight and lesser dependence on height. Binary correspondence analysis, showed that high values o f weight were associated with high values o f Cl. In this sample, Cl is not an indicator o f body mass as a whole, yet it shows that heavy weight is associated with centripetal fa t distribution as measured by this indicator and in this sense, it can be used as an index o f fa t distribution.