Osteoporosis is a common musculoskeletal disorder among the elderly and a chronic condition which, like many other chronic conditions, requires long-term clinical management. It is caused by many factors, including lifestyle and obesity. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a method to estimate body composition based on a weak electric current flow through the body. The measured voltage is used to calculate body bioelectrical impedance, divided into resistance and reactance, which can be used to estimate body parameters such as total body water (TBW), fat-free mass (FFM), fat mass (FM), and muscle mass (MM). This study aims to find the tendency of osteoporosis in obese subjects, presenting a method based on hierarchical clustering, which, using BIA parameters, can group patients who show homogeneous characteristics. Grouping similar patients into clusters can be helpful in the field of medicine to identify disorders, pathologies, or more generally, characteristics of significant importance. Another added value of the clustering process is the possibility to define cluster prototypes, i.e., imaginary patients who represent models of “states”, which can be used together with clustering results to identify subjects with similar characteristics in a classification context. The results show that hierarchical clustering is a method that can be used to provide the detection of states and, consequently, supply a more personalized medicine approach. In addition, this method allowed us to elect BIA as a potential prognostic and diagnostic instrument in osteoporosis risk development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.