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ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATION |
1 From the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hyattsville MD (KMF, ACL, LGB, CLO, and NS); the Department of Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, CA (JAS); and the National Cancer Institute, (BIG), the National Institute on Aging (TBH), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, (JEE), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. 2 The findings and conclusions of this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of abovementioned agencies. 3 Reprints not available. Address correspondence to KM Flegal, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3311 Toledo Road, Room 4201, Hyattsville, MD 20782. E-mail: kmf2{at}cdc.gov.
Background: Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and the waist-stature ratio (WSR) are considered to be possible proxies for adiposity.
Objective: The objective was to investigate the relations between BMI, WC, WSR, and percentage body fat (measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) in adults in a large nationally representative US population sample from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Design: BMI, WC, and WSR were compared with percentage body fat in a sample of 12,901 adults.
Results: WC, WSR, and BMI were significantly more correlated with each other than with percentage body fat (P < 0.0001 for all sex-age groups). Percentage body fat tended to be significantly more correlated with WC than with BMI in men but significantly more correlated with BMI than with WC in women (P < 0.0001 except in the oldest age group). WSR tended to be slightly more correlated with percentage body fat than was WC. Percentile values of BMI, WC, and WSR are shown that correspond to percentiles of percentage body fat increments of 5 percentage points. More than 90% of the sample could be categorized to within one category of percentage body fat by each measure.
Conclusions: BMI, WC, and WSR perform similarly as indicators of body fatness and are more closely related to each other than with percentage body fat. These variables may be an inaccurate measure of percentage body fat for an individual, but they correspond fairly well overall with percentage body fat within sex-age groups and distinguish categories of percentage body fat.
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