Concordance between body fat percentage stablished by bio impedance and estimation formulas based in anthropometric measurements

Abstract

Obesity is one of the most important health issues worldwide. According to the Mexican National Survey of Health and Nutrition 2018 “ENSANUT”, 76.8% of women and 73% of men who are 18 years or older are overweight or obese, and the majority are not well diagnosed. One of the greatest difficulties in order to diagnose this disease is the poor correlation between the BMI and the real fat percentage. There are different ways to estimate the fat percentage. Some of them are the formulas based on anthropometric measures. We conducted a retrolective, descriptive, transversal trial to analyze the correlation between the fat percentage measured by bioelectrical impedance with In Body 230 and the one calculated with the Deurenberg, Lean, and CUN BAE formulas in Mexican adults. We analyzed 319 people, 111 men, and 208 women. The average age was 43.8, and 44.13 years, respectively. The average BMI for each gender was 36.5 kg/m2 and 33.8 kg/m2, and the average fat percentage was 38.23 and 45.53 respectively. We calculated de Pearson correlation index between fat percentage mesure by bioelectrical impedance and the one calculated by the formulas enlisted before. We also calculated the W/H and the average between the three formulas. The Pearson correlation index for Deurenberg’s formula was 0.71, for men and 0.816 for women. For Lean’s formula was 0.622 for men and 0.701 for women, and for CUN BAE’s formula 0.77for men, and 0.856 for women. All of them with estatistical significance (p<0.001). For the W/H was 0.702 (p<0.001) for men and 0.681 (p<0.001) for women, and for the average of the three formulas was 0.73 (p<0.001) for men and 0.828 (p<0.001) for women. In conclusion CUN BAE´s and Deurenberg’s formulas have a higher correlation with the fat percentage in both genders, and CUN BAE’s formula is the one with more correlation in women.