Chest
Clinical InvestigationsPediatricsInfluence of Body Composition, Hemoglobin Concentration, and Cardiac Size and Function of Gender Differences in Maximal Oxygen Uptake in Prepubertal Children
Section snippets
Subjects
Thirty-five healthy children (17 girls and 18 boys) participated in the entire experiment. All were volunteers from a local school who were examined clinically on the day of the test, and their pubertal status was assessed.14 Any child exhibiting signs of pubertal development was excluded from taking part. This study received approval from the local ethics committee, and written informed consent was obtained from all the children’s parents. All children were active but not participating in
Results
The physical characteristics of the children are reported in Table 1 . No significant differences were observed between the boys and girls in height and body mass. Girls tended to have higher body fat mass content, but the difference failed to reach statistical significance; however, LBM was higher in the boys than in girls. Hemoglobin concentration was similar in both groups.
Resting echocardiographic data are outlined in Table 2 . The aortic diameter was higher in the boys than in the girls,
Discussion
The major finding of the present study was that gender differences in o2max in children were due principally to absolute SV differences given that HR and DAVO2 were similar in boys and girls. However, allometric normalization of absolute SV for LBM totally eliminated this gender difference, and according to power calculation the group size was sufficient. Consequently, gender difference in o2max in children only appears to be a reflection of differences in body composition but not
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank Mrs. Margaret Manson for her assistance with the English.
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