ArticleObesity (Silver Spring, Md.)2016
The prevalence and validity of high, biologically implausible values of weight, height, and BMI among 8.8 million children.
Article in Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluation of mobile phone-based Positive Deviance/Hearth child undernutrition program in Cambodia.Maternal & child nutrition · 2021Trial
- Home Fortification of Complementary Foods Reduces Anemia and Diarrhea among Children Aged 6-18 Months in Bihar, India: A Large-Scale Effectiveness Trial.The Journal of nutrition · 2021Trial
- Weight status of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: A cross-sectional analysis of primary care electronic medical records and linked health administrative datasets in Ontario, Canada.Pediatric obesity · 2025Article
- Exploring the impact of artificial sweeteners on diabetes management and glycemic control.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Review
- Association between Leisure Screen Time and Junk Food Intake in a Nationwide Representative Sample of Spanish Children (1-14 Years): A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Low-Income Black and Hispanic Children's Neighborhood Food Environments and Weight Trajectories in Early Childhood.Academic pediatrics · 2020Article
- Does exclusion of extreme reporters of energy intake (the "Goldberg cutoffs") reliably reduce or eliminate bias in nutrition studies? Analysis with illustrative associations of energy intake with health outcomes.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2019Article
- Prevalence of overweight and obesity in Western countries: discrepancies in published estimates.European journal of epidemiology · 2019Article
- Not so implausible: impact of longitudinal assessment of implausible anthropometric measures on obesity prevalence and weight change in children and adolescents.Annals of epidemiology · 2019Article
- Prevalence of pain reports in pediatric primary care and association with demographics, body mass index, and exam findings: a cross-sectional study.BMC pediatrics · 2018Observational
- Longitudinal changes in BMI z-scores among 45 414 2-4-year olds with severe obesity.Annals of human biology · 2017Article
- The Limitations of Transforming Very High Body Mass Indexes into z-Scores among 8.7 Million 2- to 4-Year-Old Children.The Journal of pediatrics · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThis study assessed the prevalence and consistency of high values of weight, height, and BMI considered to be biologically implausible (BIV) using cut points proposed by WHO among 8.8 million low-income children (13.7 million observations).
methodsCross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were performed among 2- to 4-year-olds who were examined from 2008 through 2011.
resultsOverall, 2.7% of the body size measurements were classified as BIVs; 95% of these BIVs were very high. Among the subset of children (3.6 million) examined more than once, most of those who initially had a high weight or BMI BIV also had a high BIV at the second examination; odds ratios were >250. Based on several alternative classifications of BIVs, the current cut points likely underestimate the prevalence of obesity by about 1%.
conclusionsMany of the extremely high values of body size currently flagged as BIVs are unlikely to be errors. Increasing the z-score cut points or using a percentage of the maximum values in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, could improve the balance between removing probable errors and retaining those that are likely correct.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.