Evaluation of the Heath-Carter Somatotype Revisited: New Bioimpedance Equations for Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Based on the results of the cross-sectional anthropological study of 2364 Russian children and adolescents aged 7-17 years, we suggest simple prediction formulae for automated bioimpedance-based evaluation of endomorphy and mesomorphy components of the Heath-Carter somatotype: ENDO _BIA = 0.5282×FMi + 0.2580×BMI - 0.04822×BM - 1.881 (r2=0.81, SEE=0.65); MESO _BIA = 0.3651×FFMi + 0.42765×BMI - 0.09323×BM - 4.803 (r²=0.81, SEE=0.54), where BMI, FMi and FFMi are, respectively, the body mass, fat mass and fatfree mass indices (kg/m²), and BM is the body mass (kg). In addition, in order to avoid using indirect bioimpedance body composition estimates, alternative formulae are constructed based only on directly measured rather than estimated bioimpedance data: ENDO _BIA = -3224.7/R + 0.63867×BMI - 0.04162×BM - 2.195 (r²=0.81, SEE=0.65); MESOBIA = 2195.4/R + 0.52966×BMI - 0.09740×BM - 4.5522 (r²=0.81, SEE=0.54), where R is the whole-body electrical resistance (Ohm) at a frequency of 50 kHz. These formulae can be used for the specified age range regardless of sex and, due to relatively high proportion of the explained variance, are suitable for individual typology.