Normality was investigated visually using histograms. Leptin and lipoprotein (a) were not normally distributed and transformed using the natural logarithm. To facilitate the comparison of individual cardiometabolic risk factors of the children with international reference values, we standardized the following risk factors based on age- and sex-specific reference values proposed by Stavnsbo et al. [32]: waist circumference, BMI, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, and triglycerides.
