Neck circumference as a screening measure of overweight/obesity among Indian adults

Abstract

Neck circumference (NC) is an anthropometric measurement of differentiating body fat distributions and a marker of upper subcutaneous adiposity. The present study highlights the association and importance of NC as a suitable proxy screening measure of overweight/obesity as compared to the conventional anthropometric variables used among Indian adults. The present community based cross-sectional study was undertaken among 1169 Karbi adults (males: 625; females: 544) residing in Karbi Anglong district of Assam, Northeast India, who were selected through a multistage stratified random sampling method. Height, weight, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC) and NC were recorded using standard procedures. The body mass index (BMI) was calculated and prevalence of overweight/obesity was assessed using standard cut-offs. The prevalence of obesity using BMI (≥25.00 kg m -2 ) was 15.52% and 15.26% among males and females, respectively (p≥0.05).The prevalence of obesity using NC was observed to be significantly higher among males (48.80%) than females (19.12%) (p<0.01). The binary logistic regression analysis showed that NC predicted obesity over the conventional anthropometric variables with reasonable accuracy (p<0.01). The ROC-AUC analysis showed a relatively greater significant association between BMI, WC and HC and NC for obesity (p<0.01). Thus, NC appears to be a potentially simple, easyto-use screening measure for predicting obesity among adults. Further studies are required to validate its use for screening of obesity among other ethnic populations in India.

Cut-off point estimation of Neck circumference to determine Overweight and Obesity among Asian Indian adults

“…In the present study, an attempt has been made to identify the reliability and acceptability of NC as a valid parameter over the conventionally used anthropometric measures (e.g., BMI and WC) for adiposity assessment and to estimate the sex-specific cut-offs among adult Asian Indian population. Studies have suggested the use of NC in combination with anthropometric measures separates the effects of visceral and subcutaneous body fat-mass and excess adiposity distributions [5,8,10,12,15,20]. Results of the present study have indicated positive associations of NC with BMI and WC in both sexes (p<0.01).…”

“…Results of the present study have indicated positive associations of NC with BMI and WC in both sexes (p<0.01). Several researchers have reported similar significant associations of NC with BMI and WC [2,3,4,5,8,20]. Results of the linear regression analysis showed that NC was the best predictor variables of BMI than WC (Figure 1).…”

“…This was indicative of a strong association between NC and widely used conventional anthropometric measures of obesity (e.g., BMI and WC). Several studies have reported that NC could be a better anthropometric measurement in assessments of overweight and obesity [1,4,5,6,8,18,20]. Ben-Noun et al [30], while comparing NC with BMI, found the accuracy of NC measurement to determine overweight and obesity to be 91.0%-95.0% for men and 97.0%-98.0% for women.…”

“…Upper body fat distribution has long been recognised to relate to increase risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, type-II diabetes and metabolic disorders. Neck circumference (NC) is a relatively new anthropometric measurement of differentiating body fat distributions and proposed as a proxy measurement of upper body subcutaneous tissue distributions [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Researchers have tried to establish that upper body fat distributions relate to greater NC and could have an association with increased risks of type-II diabetes and hypertension [1,6,10], cardiovascular diseases [2,11,12] and metabolic disorders [2,5,6,7,9].…”

“…Several studies have reported use of NC as an easy-to-use, proxy anthropometric screening measurement of overweight and obesity [1,2,4,6,8,10,12,20]. Researchers have also reported that NC has the potential to surpass conventional anthropometric measures (e.g., BMI and WC) as a powerful marker of adiposity distribution, cardio-metabolic syndrome disorders and insulin resistance [1,5,6,14,26].…”