Are arm measurements better than BMI to assess nutrition status in child cancer survivors?

Arm anthropometry is a simple method to determine if a person is overweight or obese, and because it can distinguish between fat and muscle mass, unlike body mass index (BMI), it is a valuable method for assessing muscle loss in long-term survivors of childhood cancer. A new study that compares two arm anthropometry measures to BMI to determine the nutritional status of leukemia survivors is published in Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology.

In the article "Anthropometry in Long-Term Survivors of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Childhood and Adolescence," the researchers discuss the value of this easy approach to evaluating for obesity and loss of muscle mass in this at-risk population, especially in lower socioeconomic populations where access to more costly tools for measuring body composition may not be available.

Laura Collins, Amy Cranston, Stefanie Savoie, Trishana Nayiager, and Ronald Barr, MB ChB, MD, McMaster Children's Hospital and McMaster University, and Lesley Beaumont, Hamilton Health Sciences (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) compared BMI to two different arm measures: triceps skin fold thickness, which indicates a person's fat mass; and mid-upper arm circumference, which correlates to lean body mass.