The availability of body composition reference data for the elderly.

A significant public health issue is the nutritional, functional and health status of the elderly, many of whom live to very old ages, and three-quarters are living in developing countries. The assessment of health and nutritional status for the elderly needs improving in order to reduce health care costs. Health, function, disease and disability are associated with amounts of bone, fat and muscle in the body s composition. The ability to screen elderly persons for osteoporosis, obesity or sarcopenia requires normal distributions of measures of stature, weight and body composition in old age. Distribution statistics and selected percentiles for stature and weight are available from national health surveys in numerous countries. There are also numerous sets of body composition data collected from elderly persons around the world. These data sets provide important and valid descriptive information as a supplement to national reference data sets. The largest available data set for the elderly is the NHANES III, but in terms of numbers, the NHANES III sample of elderly is limited to availability of the 25th and 75th percentiles levels for stature, weight and BMI from 60 to 90 years of age for non-Hispanic Whites, and from 60 to 79 years of age for non-Hispanic Blacks and Mexican Americans.