Standing-Long-Jump Test Application in Identifying Female Adolescents at Risk of Sarcopenic Obesity

Abstract

The identification of children and adolescents who are at risk of sarcopenic obesity development often requires specialized equipment and expensive test procedures. Therefore, the establishment of cheaper and faster methods would be greatly useful, especially if they could be applied in the field. The study’s objective was to establish if identification of female adolescents who suffer the risk of developing sarcopenic obesity can be obtained through the standing-long-jump test application. To achieve the research objectives, various anthropometric and body composition measurements were performed and lower limb explosive strength was assessed using the standing long jump fitness test. The research was conducted on a sample of 535 female respondents randomly selected from 9 elementary schools in the Skopje region of the Republic of North Macedonia. The respondents were divided into quintiles according to BMI z-scores, and the arithmetic means and SD about muscle-to-fat ratio were calculated for each quintile. The cutoff was determined based on the mean and standard deviation of the muscle-to-fat ratio for the 3rd quintile of BMI and the percentage of respondents with sarcopenic obesity was examined. The optimal cut-off value of the long jump fitness test results for predicting sarcopenic obesity in an adolescent girl showed that the area under the ROC curve was 0.781 (95 % CI 0.743–0.815). The standing-long-jump test values, on grounds of odds ratio (OR 95 % CI) about the girls at risk of sarcopenic obesity development, which was identified on muscle-to-fat ratio base, were 8.76 (4.39 - 17.54, p 0.001). It can be used to predict sarcopenic obesity presence in female adolescents, which can be vital in case of health intervention.