The ability of waist-to-height ratio to identify health risk

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the performance of the ratio between the waist circumference and the height in the identification of health risk compared with the correlation matrix between the anthropometric parameters body mass index and waist circumference. METHODS: A population-based study presenting a transversal cut in a representative sample of the Brazilian adult and older population. The combination of the body mass index with the waist circumference resulted in health risk categories, and the cutoff points of the ratio between the waist circumference and the height as anthropometric indicator were used for classification of low and increased risk. Poisson regression was used to verify the association of systemic arterial hypertension with the health risk categories. RESULTS: The results showed 26% of adult men, 10.4% of adult women and more than 30% of the older adults of both genders classified as without risk by the combination matrix between body mass index and waist circumference presented a ratio between the waist circumference and height that showed increased risk. All risk categories continued to be associated with hypertension after control for confounding factors, being almost two times higher for adults with moderate and high risk according to both methods. When the waist-to-height ratio was used as a risk indicator, the prevalence of hypertension ratios for the older adults was 1.37 (95%CI 1.16–1.63) and 1.35 (95%CI 1.12–1.62) for men and women, respectively, being these values close to the combination matrix body mass index and waist circumference. CONCLUSIONS: The waist-to-height ratio identified more individuals at early health risk than the combination matrix between the body mass index and the waist circumference and showed comparable ability to identify health risk, regardless of gender and age, regarding the prevalence ratios for systemic arterial hypertension.

Razones de verosimilitud positiva y negativa de dos índices antropométricos en el diagnóstico de las situaciones nutricionales sobrepeso y obesidad

“…Los índices directamente asociados con la CA y específicamente con el ICE tuvieron mayor poder diagnóstico en la detección del riesgo de factores cardiometabólicos en adultos jóvenes. Nuestros resultados están en concordancia con los resultados observados por otros autores (Grimes and Schulz, 2005;Koch et al, 2008;Lee et al,, 2008;Huamán et al,, 2017;Amirabdollahian and Haghighatdoost 2018;Corrêa et al,, 2019;Nevill et al,, 2020). Se rechaza la hipótesis nula (H0) y se acepta la hipótesis alterna (H1), es decir, hay evidencia estadísticamente significativa al nivel de significación o nivel de significancia (α) del 5% para concluir que la sensibilidad, la especificidad y la seguridad del ICE son diferentes de la sensibilidad, la especificidad y la seguridad de la CA: x²P(α= 0.0500; gl= 1) ≥ 3.8416; p ≤ 0.0500.…”

Ultrasound imaging, a stethoscope for body composition assessment

“…Waist circumference (WC) is often used as raw measurement of abdominal fat, however this evaluation system is unable to separate the effect of VAT from that of SAT (17), and lacks in accuracy as regards its correlation with cardiovascular (CV) risk stratification, as described by several authors (18)(19)(20)(21). A further limitation of the WC is that the use of this measure in isolation may underestimate or overestimate the health risks for tall and short individuals with similar WCs, because there is relatively strong evidence of an inverse association between height and health risks (22)(23)(24).…”

Physical Fitness Attenuates the Impact of Higher Body Mass and Adiposity on Inflammation in Women With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

“…This is not surprising since adipose tissue is an active endocrine organ that secretes a variety of cytokines such as C-reactive protein (hsCRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and leptin, which are, in fact, involved in atherosclerosis not only in the general population (6) but also in patients with systemic autoimmune diseases (2,7,8). Among other relevant indicators, body mass index (BMI; a measure of body mass) (9), waist-to-height ratio (a measure of central adiposity) (10) and body fat percentage (a measure of total adiposity) (11), are independent predictors of cardiovascular diseases (2,12).…”