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Calibration and validation of an air-displacement plethysmography method for estimating percentage body fat in an elderly population: a comparison among compartmental models^1,2,3

¹ From the Exercise Physiology Laboratory, the Department of Kinesiology, San Francisco State University; the Department of Radiology, University of California San Francisco; the Department of Epidemiology, the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh; the National Institute on Aging, the Epidemiology, Demography, and Biometry Program, Bethesda, MD; and the Western Human Nutrition Research Center, the US Department of Agriculture, University of California, Davis.

Background: The use of hydrostatic weighing (HW) to measure body composition in the elderly can be difficult and is based on the assumption of constancy of body compartments.

Objective: We calibrated and validated a new air-displacement plethysmography (AP) method for measuring body composition in the elderly.

Design: A 4-compartment equation for calculating percentage body fat (%BF) that used body density (D_b), total body water, and bone mineral content was used as the criterion for evaluating %BF estimated by the 2- and 3-compartment models. D_b was measured by HW [D_b(HW)] and by use of the AP instrument [D_b(AP)] in 30 elderly men and 28 elderly women aged 70–79 y.

Results: D_b(AP) was not significantly different from D_b(HW). However, analysis of variance showed a significant two-way interaction between sex and compartment model (P < 0.02), indicating that the comparisons between the sexes were different across all compartment models. The %BF calculated for the women was significantly higher than that calculated for the men by both HW and AP and for all compartment models.

Conclusion: Our data indicate that D_b(AP) was not significantly different from D_b(HW). Although differences were seen in %BF between the sexes, we observed no significant differences among the compartment models within each sex for this group of older individuals.

Key Words: Body composition • elderly • men • women • hydrostatic weighing • air-displacement plethysmography • multicompartment models • body density • percentage body fat

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