Mary Regi
Introduction: Obesity is the leading risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Globally, over 1.9 billion adults are overweight and around 650 million are obese. Several studies have explored the usefulness of various anthropometric measures in evaluating the CVD risk. However, the literature evidence indicates the lack of clear consensus on the appropriate use for these anthropometric measures for evaluating the risk. Objective: To compare the different clinical variables with the fat adiposity indices as measures of cardiovascular risk, and to verify the agreement of fat adiposity indices with ABSI. Methodology: The cross-sectional cohort study was conducted at a diagnostic center in south India for a period of one year. Demographic details such as age, gender, educational qualification, occupation and socioeconomic status were obtained for all the participants. Measurements of height, weight, waist circumference and hip circumference were performed with SECA scale. The subjects were grouped into 4 distinct quartiles each based on BMI, BAI, ABSI and DEXA tissue fat percentage. The agreement of different fat adiposity indices with ABSI was verified by Kappa method. All statistical analysis was performed using Medcalc software. Results: The comparison of variables like age, gender, height, weight, waist circumference, hip circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and waist-to-height ratio among the 4 quartiles of different indices showed that waist circumference significantly differed in the fourth quartile for all the anthropometric measures. The variables like weight, hip circumference and waist-to-height ratio also differed significantly among the quartiles for measures like BMI, BAI and DEXA tissue fat percentage. Conclusion: ABSI has fair agreement with measures like BMI and DEXA tissue fat percentage.
