Anthropometric and body composition analysis in obese and non-obese subjects in three major cities in Indonesia: A cross-sectional study

Background

Screening is needed for the early detection of obesity, but if detection through anthropometric examinations and body composition measurements is not correct, then cases of obesity will increase and it will be too late to prevent. The aim of this study was to find a correlation between anthropometric parameters and body composition parameters such as fat mass in adult non-athlete males and females.

Patients and Methods

The study design was cross-sectional and included 255 men and women from three cities in Indonesia. The research subjects were 18-60 years old and underwent anthropometric and body composition examinations. The parameters assessed were body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, visceral fat, fat mass, fat-free mass index (FFMI), and normalized FFMI; BMI and fat mass was used for comparison. For further analysis, the chi-squared test and Spearman's correlation were used.

Results

The results show that BMI, waist circumference, and visceral fat had the highest difference between men-women, and in obese-non obese cases. Body mass index is a factor that has a strong correlation with fat mass (r=0.687); additionally, waist circumference can be used as a parameter that has a medium correlation with fat mass (r=0.46) and visceral fat has weak correlation with fat mass (r=0.348). Waist circumference also had a strong correlation with BMI (r=0.785). While FFMI and normalized FFMI showed correlation to BMI, but not to fat mass.

Conclusions

This study found that BMI can be used as a strong assessment to detect obesity in men and women who are not athletes, besides that waist circumference and visceral fat can be used as a easy assessment to detect obesity as a prevention action. Apart from that, FFMI and normalized FFMI can be more accurate for obese detection based on BMI or waist circumference.