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. 2023 Apr;47(4):306-312.
doi: 10.1038/s41366-023-01264-x. Epub 2023 Feb 7.

Anthropometric estimators of abdominal fat volume in adults with overweight and obesity

Sophia Michel #  1   2 , Nicolas Linder #  3   4 , Anna Linder  3   4 , Tobias Eggebrecht  3   4 , Alexander Schaudinn  4 , Matthias Blüher  5   6 , Arne Dietrich  3   7 , Timm Denecke  4 , Harald Busse  4
Affiliations

Anthropometric estimators of abdominal fat volume in adults with overweight and obesity

Sophia Michel et al. Int J Obes (Lond). 2023 Apr.

Abstract

Background/objectives: To evaluate anthropometric measures for the prediction of whole-abdominal adipose tissue volumes VXAT (subcutaneous VSAT, visceral VVAT and total VTAT) in patients with obesity.

Subjects/methods: A total of 181 patients (108 women) with overweight or obesity were analyzed retrospectively. MRI data (1.5 T) were available from independent clinical trials at a single institution (Integrated Research and Treatment Center of Obesity, University of Leipzig). A custom-made software was used for automated tissue segmentation. Anthropometric parameters (AP) were circumferences of the waist (WC) and hip (HC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and the (hypothetical) hip-to-height ratio (HHtR). Agreement was evaluated by standard deviations sd% of percent differences between estimated volumes (using results of linear AP-VXAT regression) and measured ones as well as Pearson's correlation coefficient r.

Results: For SAT volume estimation, the smallest sd% for all patients was seen for HC (25.1%) closely followed by HHtR (25.2%). Sex-specific results for females (17.5% for BMI and 17.2% for HC) and males (20.7% for WC) agreed better. VAT volumes could not be estimated reliably by any of the anthropometric measures considered here. TAT volumes in a mixed population could be best estimated by BMI closely followed by WC (roughly 17.5%). A sex-specific consideration reduced the deviations to around 16% for females (BMI and WC) and below 14% for males (WC).

Conclusions: We suggest the use of sex-specific parameters-BMI or HC for females and WC for males-for the estimation of abdominal SAT and TAT volumes in patients with overweight or obesity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Regression plots of anthropometric parameters–BMI (top row), HC (middle row) and WC (bottom row)–and abdominal adipose tissue volumes SAT (left column) and TAT (right column).
Data points and linear fits are shown for females (white circles, dashed black line), males (gray circles, dashed gray line) and both sexes (solid gray line) together with Pearson’s correlation coefficients rF, rM and rO, for females, males and overall, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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