Analysis of body fat percentage of residents of Republic of Serbia using the multichannel bioimpedance method

Abstract

The goal of this study was to define the population parameters of the body fat percentage of residents of the Republic of Serbia. The sample was a total of 8145 respondents, of which 3051 (37.5%) were women with an average age of 32.0 ± 9.8 years, and the rest of 5094 (62.5%) were men with an average age of 32.9 ± 11.3 years. The average value of PBF for the women subsample was 28.46 ± 9.19% and 18.00 ± 7.98% for the men subsample. The results of factorial variance analysis have shown that there is a statistically significant difference (p<0.001) of PBF values regarding sex (F=1243.719) and respondent's age (F=508.469) as well as the interaction of factors "age" and "sex" (F=22.593). The regression analysis has shown that age explains 82.09% of variance regarding the age function for women and 85.08% of variance regarding the age function for men, taking into consideration that the function that best describes the variance PBF for women is linear and polynomial for men. Both sex and age are determined as factors that influence over-increasing the values of PBF, while the most critical groups where PBF crosses critical values are the groups of women over 50 years of age (the average prevalence of overweight and obese is 37.81% and 23.89% respectively) and men over 60 years of age (the average prevalence of overweight and obese is 25.48% and 38.36% respectively).