Abstract
Background/objectivesTo develop age- and sex-specific centile reference curves for fat-free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM) adjusted for height in an adult Kenyan population and to investigate the association between FM, FFM and blood pressure (BP).Subjects/methodsMeasures of body composition from bioimpedance analyses and BP were collected in 1995 participants aged ≥50 years in Nakuru County, Kenya. Reference curves were produced using the LMS method. Multivariable linear regression models were used to test the cross-sectional association between body composition indexes and BP.ResultsThe age- and sex-specific reference curves for body composition (FMI and FFMI) confirmed that FFMI is lower in both men and women with increasing age. FMI declines with age in women while among men the decline starts after 70 years. FFM was higher in men (47.4 ± 7.2 kg) than in women (38.8 ± 5.5 kg), while FM was lower in men (17.3 ± 8.1 kg) than in women (24.4 ± 10.2 kg). FMI, FFMI and BMI were all positively associated with systolic and diastolic BP, and after adjusting for body weight, FFMI remained positively associated with systolic BP and the FMI remained positively associated with diastolic BP. There was no evidence to suggest that FMI and FFMI were superior to measurement of BMI alone.ConclusionsThese body composition reference curves provide normative data on body composition for older adults in Kenya. Further research should consider the prospective associations with health, including frailty-related outcomes.
Highlights
IntroductionThere is growing interest in the effect of body composition, beyond body weight, on health outcomes linked to aging
There is growing interest in the effect of body composition, beyond body weight, on health outcomes linked to agingElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.[1, 2]
Nutritional assessment has relied upon the body mass index (BMI), which is easy, cheap and convenient to measure, but it is limited because the relative proportion of fat mass (FM) and fat free-mass (FFM) is unknown
Summary
There is growing interest in the effect of body composition, beyond body weight, on health outcomes linked to aging. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a simple, portable, inexpensive and non-invasive technique to assess FFM and FM [3]; the use of body composition measurements in routine health surveillance and in clinical practice is limited by the lack of reference data to allow the classification of individuals at risk across the age spectrum. Body composition varies by population [10, 11], and loss of FFM may be related to ethnicity, diet, physical inactivity or Reference values for body composition and associations with blood pressure in Kenyan adults aged
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