Relationships of food intake and body composition with serum total cholesterol in boys and girls

1992 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 03670279
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: 公衆衛生学
• Research Institution: Akita University
• Principal Investigator: TAKASAKI Yuji Akita Univ., Dept. of Education, Associate Prof., 教育学部, 助教授 (40117297)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HISAMATSU Shunichi Akita Univ., School of Medicine, Assistant, 医学部, 助手 (50108932)
• Project Period (FY): 1991 – 1992
• Keywords: Serum total cholesterol / Blood pressure / Junior high school students / Hyper-lipemia / Hypertension

Research Abstract

A recent trend of cardiovascular diseases in Japan is the decreases in apoplexy and ischemic heart disease. It is insufficient, however, that we cope only with hypertension in order to decrease these diseases further, and it is necessary to prevent atherosclerosis and hyper-lipemia. It has also been pointed out that there is a tracking phenomenon in the levels of serum lipids from childhood. The purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of some anthropological variables on serum total cholesterol and blood pressure in boys and girls. Subjects were junior high school students living in the suburbs of Akita city, comprising 189 boys and 171 girls between the ages of 13and 15 years. Measurements were carried out on weight and skinfold thicknesses at the triceps and subscapular sites, and body composition variables were estimated. Additionally bioelectric impedance was measured with an analyzer (Selco,model 891) on the right side of each supine subject, and percent body fat was calculated to check body composition variables from the skinfolds method. For correlation coefficients of blood pressure with anthropological variables, they were not so high against expectation. On the other hand, borderline and hypertensive subjects obviously had overweight and large percent body fat. For serum total cholesterol, it was showed that boys with high serum total cholesterol tended to have thick skinfolds and large percent body fat. Some observations give the implication of difficulty for health administration during puberty, since there are necessary changes in blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, and other anthropological variables through growth and development.