Adolescents' physical activity habits--results from a national health survey.

BACKGROUND: The MABAT Youth National Health and Nutrition Survey was conducted in Israel by the Ministry of Health and the Center for Disease Control. This article presents results of physical activity (PA) habits in Israel, in relation to recommendations by world health organizations. METHODS: Participants were 6274 adolescents, grades 7-12, enrolled in a cross-sectional, representative, school-based survey. Sufficient level of PA was defined as any moderate and vigorous level of PA that adds up daily to 60 min/day. Light PA was considered to be an insufficient level of PA. RESULTS: Only 10.5% of the participants reported performing sufficient PA. Large gender differences were found, with 17.7% of boys versus only 4.6% of girls meeting the guidelines. CONCLUSIONS: Results highlight the need to develop programmes for school children in Israel to promote PA. Such programmes have been initiated in many countries that have a large percentage of adolescents with a sedentary lifestyle.

The effects of maternal and fetal parameters on the quality of nuchal translucency measurement.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the influence of maternal and fetal parameters on the quality of fetal nuchal translucency measurement. DESIGN: This was a prospective study in 227 consecutive pregnant women undergoing nuchal translucency screening by transabdominal sonography. The same well-qualified sonographer performed all the scans and in each case the best-quality image was selected and scored according to an image scoring system (total maximum score, 9). The quality of the image was examined in relation to maternal age, weight, abdominal wall thickness, amniotic sac diameter, posterior uterine wall depth (distance between abdominal wall surface and posterior uterine wall surface), placental location, fetal crown-rump length and nuchal translucency thickness. Correlation coefficients were calculated and stepwise linear regression was used to adjust for confounders and to define the predictors for image score. RESULTS: The only two parameters that provided a significant independent contribution to the prediction of the image score were posterior uterine wall depth and fetal crown-rump length. Intravariable analysis of these two parameters demonstrated that the cut-off associated with a significant change in the image quality was 80 mm for posterior uterine wall depth (score difference, 1.06; P < 0.001) and 70 mm for crown-rump length (score difference, 0.77; P = 0.001). In the group of women with two values above these cut-off points, an average score decrease of 1.90 (P < 0.001) was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of fetal nuchal translucency measurement is poorer when the fetal crown-rump length is > 70 mm and the posterior uterine wall depth is > 80 mm.