PEDIATRICS Vol. 28 No. 6 December 1961, pp. 971-984
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BONE, MUSCLE AND FAT MEASUREMENTS

Longitudinal Measurements of the Bone, Muscle and Fat Widths from Roentgenograms of the Extremities During the First Six Years of Life

Marion M. Maresh M.D.1

1 The Child Research Council and the University of Colorado School of Medicine

The widths of the bone, muscle and fat shadows were measured at specific locations on 14 seriatim roentgenograms of the extremities of 25 boys and 25 girls between the ages of 2 months and 6 years. Mean values for each of these measurements were presented and demonstrate the changes with age that have been presented by other workers. Interesting individual differences were found in the relative widths of the same tissue measured at different locations as well as changes in relative level of bone, muscle and fat widths with increasing age.

Coefficients of correlation between these measurements and weight were all reasonably good, but the height:muscle widths and height:fat widths were considerably lower than the height:bone widths correla tions for both sexes. The bone:fat and muscle:fat correlations were low (-0.1 to 0.2) for both sexes, but a surprising difference which has not been reported by previous workers was found in the bone: muscle correlations for boys (over 0.5 after 1 year of age) and for girls (0.1 to 0.2).

For these 50 children, assessments of skeletal age at the chronologic age of 5 years were also available. The correlations with height and weight at this age were 0.32 and 0.38 for the boys and 0.47 and 0.52 for the girls.

A superficial examination of the nutritional data of these children and of their records of basal metabolism for this 6-year period has not revealed any obvious relationships between either of these sets of data and the bone, muscle and fat measurements in this study.

Accepting these measurements as less consistent than those made from roentgenograms taken for soft tissue delineation, and also accepting that these measurements are but one dimension of the tissue mass in the total body, they do seem to be a useful supplement to the clinical and anthropometric data in the study of the body composition of the child.




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Bone Accrual in Children: Adding Substance to Surfaces
Pediatrics, March 1, 2007; 119(Supplement_2): S137 - S140.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]