Evaluation of Abdominal Obesity, Body Fat Percentage and its Correlation with Occurrences of School Bag Carriage Related Pain among Rural Children of West Bengal, India

Abstract

School going children are exposed to carry heavy schoolbags which have adverse consequences on their rapidly developing spine. There is large number of children carry schoolbag greater than 10% of body weight (BW) and are susceptible to musculoskeletal pain. Nutritional status and perception of pain is different among rural and urban children. This study aimed to evaluate abdominal obesity and its association along with body fat percentage with occurrences of pain. Methods: Nutritional anthropometric parameters of 160 randomly selected rural (n=80) and urban children (control group, n=80) of 8-15 years of West Bengal, India were measured. Waist to height ratio (WHtR) was considered to determine abdominal obesity. Body fat percentage of rural boys and girls (n=24 and n= 23 respectively) was directly measured by bioelectrical impedance. Perception of pain was evaluated by 10 point subjective scale. Point biserial r between the parameters was calculated. Results: Result showed that mean weight carriage (% of BW) was higher than the recommended limit among rural and urban boys and girls (12.6, 12.9, 11.6, 12.0 respectively). Percentage of urban children exposed to pain was much higher than rural children. Rural children were vulnerable to abdominal obesity (40 % and 45% boys and girls respectively exceeded the cut off value). No correlation was observed between WHtR and pain. But significant negative correlation was observed between fat % and neck pain and among girls (r=-0.35), significant positive correlation was observed between fat % and neck and back pain (r=0.42 and 0.41 respectively) (p<0.05 for both boys and girls). Conclusion: This study revealed the necessity of nutritional status and thus habitat specific load limit optimization to reduce schoolbag carriage related stress.