The use of portable abdominal bioimpedance analyzer Yscope in the assessment of abdominal obesity.

Abstract

Background: Obesity, especially abdominal obesity, is strongly correlated with metabolic and other health risks. Diagnosis and assessment of obesity is important in clinical and routine preventive practice. From the point of view of risk, it is necessary to distinguish not only the area of fat tissue accumulation, but also its type.

Objective: The aim of the study was to use a new portable abdominal bioimpedance analyzer, which is intended for the area of abdominal adipose tissue, as part of the evaluation of the body structure of a selected group of volunteers with a focus on the differentiation of subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue and to assess its usefulness in practice.

Material and methods: Body composition was analyzed using a portable abdominal bioimpedance analyzer Yscope (PA-BIA) in combination with a bioimpedance device InBody 970 (high-frequency bioelectrical impedance/HF-BIA). Eighty-three volunteers at the age of 24.92±7.24 years with representation of both sexes participated in the study.

Results: Abdominal fat did not differ significantly between the sexes, women reached an average value of 2.01±1.14 kg, men 2.22±1.60 kg (p>0.05). Gender differentiation was manifested in the case of visceral fat (p<0.01) and visceral fat area (p<0.01), the values of which were lower in women than in men. In the case of subcutaneous fat, we found the opposite trend of values in relation to gender, where lower values were achieved by men, but there were no significant differences (p>0.05). Visceral fat was most correlated with abdominal fat (r=0.86) and waist circumference (r=0.85), subcutaneous fat had the strongest positive correlations with abdominal fat (r=0.93) and with body fat mass (r=0.93).

Conclusions: PA-BIA in combination with HF-BIA makes it possible to determine the representation of subcutaneous and visceral fat in the abdominal area, which the conventional MFS-BIA method does not allow. When evaluating body composition, significant gender differentiation is confirmed, which is an important factor affecting different health risks related to gender and the representation of different types of fat tissue localized and accumulated in different parts of the body.