{"doi":"10.1111/ijpo.12744","title":"Weight for length measures may not accurately reflect adiposity in preterm infants born appropriate for gestational age during hospitalisation or after discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit","abstract":"Summary Background Weight/length (W/L) indices are poor surrogates for adiposity in preterm infants born appropriate for gestational age (AGA) at birth, but whether the association subsequently improves is unknown. Objective To determine if W/L indices accurately reflect adiposity in premature infants born AGA in later infancy. Methods Associations between W/L indices and fat mass, fat mass index and percent body fat (%BF) obtained via air displacement plethysmography (ADP) were examined in 260 preterm infants (majority born AGA) at 28 to 63 weeks' postmenstrual age (PMA). Accuracy of W/L indices as indicators of adiposity was assessed by proportion of variance explained ( R 2 ) and root mean square error from linear regression of adiposity on W/L indices and proportion of infants misclassified by W/L indices. Accuracy was further compared in term vs preterm infants at term‐equivalent age. The impact of early vs late preterm status on associations between W/L indices and %BF was also examined. Results BMI and W/L were most strongly associated with %BF but yielded poorly fitting models (maximum R 2 = 0.35; 53% misclassification). A significant interaction of W/L indices and early vs late preterm status on %BF revealed that estimation of %BF differs by status. Accuracy of W/L indices was worse in preterm infants at term‐equivalent age. Conclusions W/L indices were not good indicators of adiposity in preterm infants from 28 to 63 weeks' PMA (born AGA) with all categories of W/L indices combined. Future research should examine whether results are similar in preterm infants born with disproportionate W/L or who experience disproportionate growth postnatally.","journal":"Pediatric Obesity","year":2020,"id":74638,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9587,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":390403,"name":"C. Desjardins","orcid":"0000-0002-8234-9665","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":353748,"name":"Carrie P. Earthman","orcid":"0000-0002-7783-7437","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390404,"name":"Sara E. Ramel","orcid":"0000-0002-8485-418X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":55292,"name":"Ellen W. Demerath","orcid":"0000-0002-4585-4064","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390402,"name":"Emily Nagel","orcid":"0000-0002-5792-009X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:46:11.663457Z","pmid":"33140910","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}