COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BODY MASS INDEX OF YOUNG PERSONS IN DIFFERENT REGIONS OF RUSSIA

Being one of the aspects of the morphological constitution, the component composition of the body reflects the state of metabolic processes in the body and can serve as a kind of predictor of the development of various pathological conditions. One of the most accessible for researchers and widespread methods is the determination of body mass index, which ensures the comparability of the results obtained by different authors. The aim of our study was to systematize and compare the literature data of domestic and foreign authors on body mass index in young patients. The materials for the study were original articles and review papers published in the scientometric databases: PubMed, Google Scholar and eLibrary over the past 20 years. It is shown that the interest of the scientific community in body composition research has been steadily increasing over the past decades. Each successive year the total number of publications on body composition increases by an average of 24% relative to the previous year. According to our analysis of the results of a survey of medical students in Russia, body mass index is associated with the degree of urbanization and has geographical features: an increase in the proportion of students with a low body mass index was noted as the population of the city grew and it shifted in the direction from the eastern regions of the Russian Federation to the western. The proportion of students with a normal BMI decreases as the population of the city in which the medical school is located grows.