Concordance of the recently published body adiposity index with measured body fat percent in European-American adults

Abstract

The body adiposity index (BAI; hip circumference (cm)/height (m) 1.5 18) has recently been shown to demonstrate a stronger correlation with percentage body fat (%fat) than that between the BMI and %fat in Mexican-American adults. Here, we compare the concordance between %fat from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and BAI, and between %fat and BMI, in European-American adults (n = 623). Agreement between BAI, BMI, and %fat was assessed using Lin's concordance coefficients ( c), where values 0.90 are considered poor. In the sample as a whole, the agreement between BAI and %fat ( c = 0.752) was far better than that between BMI and %fat ( c = 0.445) but was nonetheless relatively poor. There were large mean differences in %fat between the BAI and DXA %fat, particularly at lower levels of adiposity (> 20%), and further the BAI overestimated %fat in males and underestimated %fat in females. Optimizing the BAI formula for our sample only marginally improved performance. Results of the present study show that BAI provides a better indicator of adiposity in European-American adults than does BMI, but does not provide valid estimates of %fat, particularly at lower levels of body fatness. Further research is warranted to investigate the predictive ability of BAI for various health outcomes. © 2011 The Obesity Society.