GENDER DISPARITIES IN THE BODY COMPOSITION TRENDS OF HIGHER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS BASED ON GRADE

Stefan Đorđević¹Bojan Jorgić¹Saša Milenković¹Miljan Hadžović¹Stănescu Rareș Cristian²Coja Daniel Mădălin³Ștefănescu Cătălin Aurelian³Ilie Onu^4*Daniel-Andrei Iordan³

• ¹Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Nis, Nis, Serbia
• ²Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, National University of Physical Education and Sport, Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
• ³4Research Centre for Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galati;, Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Dunarea de Jos University, Galați, Romania
• ⁴Faculty of Medical BioEngineering, Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iași, Romania

Abstract: Modern life conditions support development in almost all spheres of a child's life. However, negative aspects such as hypokinesia and obesity also appear. The aim of this research was to determine the differences in body composition parameters be-tween boys and girls in higher elementary school grades. The sample of subjects consisted of 484 school aged children from fifth to eight grades of both sexes from the territory of Knjaževac. The municipality of Knjaževac represents a group of municipalities with up to 30.000 inhabitants, and 49.6% of them in the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The instruments that were used to collect the measured parameters are: anthropometer (SECA model 284; SECA, Hamburg, Germany), body composition analyzer InBody 770 (InBody Co, Seoul, Korea). Based on the ANOVA test with the addition of post hoc analysis, a statistically significant change trend was determined trend of changes in all analyzed parameters for the assessment of body composition for skeletal muscle mass (SMM), body fat mass (BFM), lean body mass (LBM), relative lean body mass (RLBM) (p˂0.001; p=0.049; p˂0.001; p˂0.001, respectively) but not for RBFM (p = 0.145) in in children of both sexes from grades V to VIII. A significant trend of changes in variables was observed in male subjects for SMM, RSMM, LBM and RLBM (p˂0.001), and RBFM (p=0.004), while in women it was noticed in SMM and LBM (p˂0.001). Furthermore, at this age, based on the results of the trend analysis, gender differences in body composition parameters: muscle mass and body mass can be clearly observed. In male subjects, there is a significant increase in relative muscle mass, while in female subjects, there is a statistically significant trend of increasing body fat percentages. The information obtained indicates the necessity of taking gender differences into account when monitoring and analyzing body composition parameters.