Multiparametric body composition analysis and anthropometric empirical indicator: obesity based south Indian perspective.

Abstract

Obesity has emerged to be a global threat to mankind. Many abnormalities such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes emerge as outcomes of obesity. The present study aimed at bringing out a technique which considers the combinational measurement of all essential anthropometric circumferences and body mass index (BMI), so that the accurate assessment of obesity can be made. To date, BMI has been considered to be the main adiposity index, but the distribution of body fat was not taken into account by BMI. The contradictory outcomes by BMI pertaining to risk factor detection in various ethnicities and populations were witnessed. Also, BMI failed to gauge obesity in muscular body builders who possess small waists and large torsos. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and 107 subjects from urban south India participated. The measurements of body composition and anthropometry were shown. The higher significant difference of ≤ 0.001 was observed in male and female studied population, when AEI (BIA1), AEI (EXTERNAL) and BMI were compared against BFM (measured by both the devices BIA1 and BIA2). The results exhibited the prominence of AEI (Anthropometric Empirical Indicator, which is the combinational measurement of all essential anthropometric circumferences and BMI) over BMI. Also, the validity of the effective functioning of low-cost, portable, simple protocol based body composition analyzer on par with the highercost, standard body composition analyzer was demonstrated by the present study.