Abstract
Body mass index (BMI) has traditionally been used as an indicator of body size measure and composition. Although, other measures of adiposity of the abdomen such as waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), neck circumference (NC) have been suggested as being superior to BMI in predicting disease outcome. This study was designed to compare different anthropometric variables in term of their ability to predict type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This was a case-control study in 240 participants involving 120 verified T2DM cases and 120 non-diabetics as control. Age, gender and anthropometric data were collected from each participant. Logistic regression models were used with areas under the receiver operating characteristic (AROC) curve to compare the variables predictive statistics. The AROC of WHR to identify T2DM patients was 0.678 (P<0.05), with sensitivity 62.5% of and specificity of 60.8%. The AROC for average arm circumference (AAC) model is 0.649 with sensitivity of 55.8% followed by BMI model (AROC 0.635) and WC model (AROC 0.600) (P<0.05). Hip circumference (HC) (AROC 0.508) and NC (AROC 0.492) models were not significant predictors of T2DM. Subjects of ≥60 years, AAC value ≥32.6 cm, BMI value ≥ 30 kg/m2, and WHR value ≥ 0.93 were at significantly (P<0.05) higher odds of developing T2DM than lower subjects with lower values. There were no significant differences (P>0.05) in the mean HC and NC values between the diabetic and non-diabetic subjects. The non-diabetic subjects have significantly (P>0.05) higher mean height value than the diabetic subjects. Measures of generalized and central obesity were significantly associated with increased risk of developing T2DM. This study revealed that WHR can predict type 2 diabetes mellitus risk more accurately than other anthropometric measures and can thus be helpful in predicting patients with future occurrence of diabetes and providing necessary interventions
Highlights
Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs as a result of inability of the pancreatic islet cells to produce sufficient insulin or the failure of the body to effectively utilize secreted insulin
Body mass index (BMI) is commonly employed as the measure of general or overall adiposity in most observational studies but there is increasing evidence supporting central fat pattern of distribution measured by waist circumference (WC) or waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) as a better estimator of health risk than elevated body weight majorly among older adults (Huxley et al, 2010; Must and McKeown, 2012)
The results of this study revealed that subjects who were diabetic had significantly (p
Summary
Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs as a result of inability of the pancreatic islet cells to produce sufficient insulin or the failure of the body to effectively utilize secreted insulin. Prediabetes is a condition in which a person has blood glucose level higher than normal but lower than the diagnostic range for diabetes (Tuso, 2014) Lifestyle modifications such as healthy diet and exercise have been proven to delay or prevent the development of diabetes mellitus (Kerrison et al, 2017). BMI is commonly employed as the measure of general or overall adiposity in most observational studies but there is increasing evidence supporting central (abdominal) fat pattern of distribution measured by waist circumference (WC) or waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) as a better estimator of health risk than elevated body weight majorly among older adults (Huxley et al, 2010; Must and McKeown, 2012)
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