Anthropometric predictors for the risk of chronic disease in non‐diabetic, non‐hypertensive young Mexican women

Abstract

Objective: To assess the ability of anthropometric measurements to identify young women at risk of developing diabetes, hypertension and heart disease in the future and to compare cut-offs established with ROC curves to those in the literature. Measurements/Methods: The ability of anthropometric measures of fatness and fat distribution (BMI, skinfolds, waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio, conicity index, abdominal volume index) to predict risk of future disease (pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, or a combination of risk factors) was assessed using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis. Results: Mean age of the 729 women was 29.6±5.4 yr and mean BMI 27.7±4.5 kg/m2. There were no significant differences in the area under the ROC curve for BMI, WC abdominal volume index or summed skinfolds for any of the four outcomes. However, these indices performed significantly better than waist-to-hip ratio or conicity index (p<0.05). The BMI cut-off points that maximized sensitivity and specificity for the four outcomes were 27.7–28.4 kg/m2, and for WC were 89.3–91.2 mm. To detect 90% of the cases of any metabolic alteration, the necessary BMI cut-off was 26.1 kg/m2. Younger women (< 25 yr) were at great risk than older women for a given BMI increment (p < 0.05). Funding for this study came from the Berkeley Consortium on Population Health (R21 MH70950)