SynthesisPublic health nutrition2022
The performance of mid-upper arm circumference for identifying children and adolescents with overweight and obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Public health nutrition, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Validity of non-traditional measures of obesity compared to total body fat across the life course: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Mid-upper arm circumference, steatosis indices, and elastography for screening liver steatosis in children with overweight/obesity: A prospective cross-sectional study.Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition · 2026Article
- Mid-upper arm circumference and diabetes/prediabetes in children and adolescents: A cross-sectional study using NHANES data.Medicine · 2026Article
- Implications of adipocyte dysfunction in pediatric obesity: a narrative review.Pediatric endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism · 2026Review
- Application of an Ecological Approach to Assessment of Nutrition in School-Aged Children-A Report from the "Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development: Knowledge Indicating Dietary Sufficiency (BOND-KIDS)" Project Working Group 3.The Journal of nutrition · 2025Review
- Diagnostic performance of anthropometric measurements for identifying obesity in high-altitude pediatric populations: evidence from tibet via bioelectrical impedance analysis.Lipids in health and disease · 2025Article
- Multifaceted environmental factors linked to metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease: an environment-wide association study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Validity and predictability of mid-upper arm circumference for nutrition screening in outpatient preschoolers with cerebral palsy.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Changes in Body Weight and Risk Factors for Overweight and Obesity in 5-6-Year-Old Children Attending School in Geneva.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- Validation of mid-arm circumference for surveillance of obesity in African adolescent girls and adult women.The British journal of nutrition · 2023Article
- Relationship between body composition and physical fitness of primary school learners from a predominantly rural province in South Africa.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThis study aimed to synthesise the existing evidence on the performance of mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) to identify children and adolescents with overweight and obesity.
designSystematic review and meta-analysis.
settingWe searched PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CINAHL and Google scholar databases from their inception to December 10, 2021, for relevant studies. There were no restrictions regarding the language of publication. Studies reporting measures for the diagnostic performance of MUAC compared with a reference standard for diagnosing overweight and obesity in children and adolescents aged 2-19 years were included.
participantsA total of 54 381 children and adolescents from twenty-one studies were reviewed; ten studies contributed to meta-analyses.
resultsIn boys, MUAC showed a pooled AUC of 0·92 (95 % CI 0·89, 0·94), sensitivity of 84·4 (95 % CI 84·6, 90·8) and a specificity of 86·0 (95 % CI 79·2, 90·8), when compared against BMI z-score, defined overweight and obesity. As for girls, MUAC showed a pooled AUC of 0·93 (95 % CI 0·90, 0·95), sensitivity of 86·4 (95 % CI 79·8, 91·0), specificity of 86·6 (95 % CI 82·2, 90·1) when compared against overweight and obesity defined using BMI z-scores.
conclusionIn comparison with BMI, MUAC has an excellent performance to identify overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. However, no sufficient evidence on the performance of MUAC compared with gold standard measures of adiposity. Future research should compare performance of MUAC to the 'golden standard' measure of excess adiposity.
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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.