Limited reference values exist for visceral adipose tissue (VAT) mass measured by DXA. The objectives of this study were to provide reference values for DXA-derived VAT mass and compare the association with anthropometry measures. The study cohort comprised 677 men and 738 women aged 18–65 years from Western Australia. Whole-body scans using a GE Lunar iDXA and anthropometry measures were collected. Reference percentile data were stratified by sex and age. Correlation analysis compared DXA-derived and anthropometry variables. Specificity, sensitivity, and Youden’s Index were used to evaluate the ability of anthropometric thresholds to predict individuals with high VAT. In men, waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio, and waist-height ratio (WHtR) had ‘high’ correlations with VAT mass. In women, only WHtR was ‘highly’ correlated with VAT mass. Overweight thresholds for WC, along with a body mass index of 25.0 kg/m2 in women, had the highest combination of sensitivity and specificity when using anthropometry measures to identify individuals with high VAT mass. We provide the first reference data sets for DXA-derived VAT mass among Western Australians. Excessive VAT mass may be identified in men using the overweight WC threshold and in women using both the overweight BMI and WC thresholds.

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Smartphone applications (SPA) now offer the ability to provide accessible in-home monitoring of relevant individual health biomarkers. Previous cross-sectional validations of similar technologies have reported acceptable accuracy with high-grade body composition assessments; this research assessed longitudinal agreement of a novel SPA across a self-managed weight loss intervention of 38 participants (21 males, 17 females). Estimations of body mass (BM), body fat percentage (BF%), fat-free mass (FFM), and waist circumference (WC) from the SPA were compared with ground-truth (GT) measures from a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scanner and expert technician measurement. Small mean differences (MD) and standard estimate of error (SEE) were observed between method deltas (ΔBM: MD = 0.12 kg, SEE = 2.82 kg; ΔBF%: MD = 0.06 %, SEE = 1.65 %; ΔFFM: MD = 0.17 kg, SEE = 1.65 kg; ΔWC: MD = 1.16 cm, SEE = 2.52 cm). Correlation coefficient concordance (CCC) assessed longitudinal agreement between the SPA and GT methods, with moderate concordance (CCC: 0.55 – 0.73) observed for all measures. The novel SPA may not be interchangeable with high-accuracy medical scanning methods, yet offers significant benefits in cost, accessibility, and user comfort, in conjunction with the ability to monitor body shape and composition estimates over time.

To determine how brain oxygenation is stably maintained during advancing age, cerebral oxygenation and hemoglobin were measured real-time at 10 Hz using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) at rest (30 seconds) and during a 10-repeated handgrip strength test (30 seconds) for 834 adults (M/F = 45/55%) aged 20–88 y. The amplitude of cerebral hemodynamic fluctuation was reflected by converting 300 values of % oxygen saturation and hemoglobin of each 30-second phase to standard deviation as indicatives of brain oxygenation variability (BOV) and brain hemodynamic variability (BHV) for each participant. Both BOV (+21–72%) and BHV (+94–158%) increased during the maximal voluntary muscle exertions for all age levels (α < 0.05), suggesting an increased vascular recruitment to maintain oxygen homeostasis in the brain. Intriguingly, BHV was >100 folds for both resting and challenged conditions (α < 0.001) in >80% of adults aged above 50 y despite similar BOV compared with young age counterparts, indicating a huge cost of amplifying hemodynamic oscillation to maintain a stable oxygenation in the aging brain. Since vascular endothelial cells are short-lived, our results implicate a hemodynamic compensation to emergence of daily deficits in replacing senescent endothelial cells after age 50 y.

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