Body mass index in Bengali adolescents.

We describe a mixed longitudinal analysis of body mass index (BMI) in a group of Bengali adolescents (age 11-17 years) from a middle income family background and compare this against existing national and international data. Healthy school children, comprising of 416 boys and 343 girls were consented for annual repeat measurements of weight, height and pubertal staging between the years 1998 and 2001. The LMS method was used to construct smoothed BMI mean and standard deviation (SD) curves. Bengali adolescents have lower BMI than affluent Indian children and are -1 to -2 SD below US children. BMI increases in adolescence (boys: r = 0.49, p < 0.001, girls: r = 0.54, P < 0.001) with age but SMR does not have an independent effect on BMI.