IAEA's stable isotope technique to assess body composition

IAEA will use stable isotope technique to assess body composition to tackle childhood obesity. The IAEA initiative will use the deuterium dilution technique in a sample of school children from the 10 countries to describe the relationship between BMI and body composition. The deuterium dilution technique is a state-of-the-art methodology to assess body composition and thus provides a tool to evaluate the effects of altered diet and physical activity on adiposity.

A person drinks a weighed amount of water, that is labeled with deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen. Read more.