Reference percentile for height, weight and BMI among children/adolescents of Karachi Pakistan

Pakistani children of school going age significantly differed from WHO references in which overweight and obesity were significantly higher and underweight was lower than normal when compare to WHO references. Due to this huge discrepancy and lack of data, there was a dire need to establish age appropriate BMI ranges for Pakistani population. The basic aim of the study is to find out the BMI ranges among the school going children/adolescents of Karachi Pakistan. A cross sectional study was conducted among children belonging to different ethnic groups in primary, middle, secondary schools and Maddarsa (religious educational institutes) of Karachi. Height in centimeters (cm) and weight in kilogram (kg) were measured. BMI was calculated using height and weight. WHO’s BMI graph was used to find out the percentile for labelling underweight, normal healthy individual, overweight and obese. A total of about 1244 samples of children and adolescents aged seven to eighteen years were included. The mean age of the study participants was 12.96±2.8 years, in which boys having mean age of 13.1±2.7 years while for girls mean age was 12.66±2.8 years. The mean height (cm) and weight (kg) among the study participants were 146.92±15.84 and 41.20±15.69 respectively. Among younger age group, the girls were taller than the boys but after reaching the age of 15 the girls having approximately the same height up to the age of 18th and as for boys, the findings were vice versa. Majority of the participants reported normal BMI while for over abnormality, the higher prevalence of participants being overweight rather than underweight when comparing with the WHO references. Measures must be taken to assess what current set up is doing right, and then it must be implemented at a larger scale.