Relationship of total body fatness and five anthropometric indices in Chinese aged 20–40 years: different effects of age and gender

Abstract

Objectives: We aim to evaluate the ethnic-specific relationship of total fat mass and anthropometric indices in Chinese. Design: Cross-section study. Setting: This study was performed at the College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, P.R. China. Subjects and method: To increase our understanding of the relationship of total fat mass and anthropometric indices in Chinese, 793 females and 1091 males aged 20-40 years were randomly recruited from Changsha city of P. R. China. Hip circumference (HC) and waist circumference (WC) were measured using standardized equipments, and other three anthropometric indices of body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and conicity index (CI) were calculated using weight, height, HC and WC. Total body fatness (TBF) in kg was measured using a Hologic QDR 4500 W dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanner. Results: There was an increasing trend of TBF, %TBF (percent total body fatness) and the five anthropometric indices in successively older age groups. Compared with females, males generally had high average BMI, WC, HC, WHR and CI, but had low average TBF and %TBF. Except for some correlations in 25-29 years age groups, TBF and %TBF were significantly correlated with five anthropometric indices with the Pearson's correlation coefficients ranging from 0.07 to 0.87. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to form four principal components (PCs) that interpreted over 99% of the total variation of the five related anthropometric indices in all age groups, with over 53% of the total variation accounted for by the PC1. Multiple regression analyses showed that four PCs combined explained a greater variance (R 2 ¼ 55.2-80.8%) in TBF than did BMI alone (R 2 ¼ 40-74.9%). Conclusion: Our results suggest that there is an increasing trend of total fat mass and five anthropometric indices with aging; that age and sex have the important effects on influencing the correlations of TBF and the studied anthropometric indices; and that the accuracy of predicting the TBF using five anthropometric indices is higher than using BMI alone.

Gray and white matter structures in the midcingulate cortex region contribute to body mass index in Chinese young adults

“…The BMI distribution in the present study was comparable with that in other studies of Chinese college students (Sakamaki et al 2005; Ge 1997). Males (21.01 ± 2.28) had significantly higher BMI than females (19.92 ± 2.05; t(334) = 4.57, p < .01 ), consistent with previous findings in healthy young Chinese (Lei et al 2005). …”

Gender-linked differences in human skin

“…Conicity is an index of body fat distribution expressing an individual's waist circumference relative to the circumference of a cylinder generated with that persons weight and height assuming constant body density. This study confirmed that females had larger absolute and relative total body fat than males [70].…”

Obesity Phenotype and Coronary Heart Disease Risk as Estimated by the Framingham Risk Score

“…Subjects with central obesity were older and had a higher frequency of being females than the normal WC group, regardless of general obesity assessed by BMI. It is well known that when comparing subjects who have similar BMIs, older persons would have more body fat than do younger persons and that women have more body fat than do men (14, 15). Hauner et al (16) has also reported that the prevalence of obesity increased notably with age while women had an increased WC more often than men.…”