Anthropometry & Body Composition and Vitamin D

Anthropometry and Body Composition: from techniques to growth and clinical implications

The use of simpler techniques like skin fold thicknesses and basic measurements of weight and girth are still in clinical and field use today as they were decades ago. In this collection are newer papers that highlight their importance to growth monitoring and modelling, as well as their implications for deciding health risk from childhood malnutrition to obesity and metabolic syndrome. This is supported by other studies on newer devices that allow separation of areas of interest, and include papers on whole body potassium, CT scans for muscle mass and in-vivo validation of DEXA derived visceral adipose tissue, to name a few. We hope you enjoy reading or revisiting these articles that have appeared in EJCN over the last 3 years, and find them of use in your current research.

Vitamin D: bioavailability, predictors of status and extra-skeletal health effects

Vitamin D and its effects on bone health has been well documented. There is now a great interest in less than optimal vitamin D status (which is very common), and the rise in many conditions like obesity and type2 diabetes. The papers presented in this section cover a wide range of topic from bioavailability of the vitamin, to predictors of status and its putative relationships to extra-skeletal health.