A high waist circumference (WC) is used as a risk factor for impaired fasting blood glucose (IFG) in adults. This association is less studied in children and teenagers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between having a high WC and IFG by sex and age in a sample of Mexican children and teenagers. We analyzed the data of 12979 participants aged 5 to 17 years to calculate percentile references for uncorrected WC, corrected for height (WC/HT) and by height squared (WC/HT2) with quantile regression. A subsample of 2309 participants with fasting blood glucose samples (FBG), WC, WC/HT and WC/HT2 values was analyzed with logistic regression. A high WC, WC/HT, and WC/HT2 were considered at the sex- and age-specific 90th percentile from the subsample. The IFG was considered as FBG ≥100 mg/dL. Having a high WC, WC/HT, nor WC/HT2 was not significantly associated with IFG for either sex and age group (all p > 0.05). A high WC, either on its uncorrected or corrected for height values, was not an important assessment for predicting IFG in a sample of Mexican children and teenagers. This study provides percentile reference values specific for sex and age.
Keywords: blood glucose; children; teenagers; waist circumference.