Reliability analyses and values of isometric shoulder flexion and trunk extension strengths stratified by body mass index.

Lora A Cavuoto,Ranjana K Mehta,Mojdeh Pajoutan,Dalton Müller Pessôa Filho

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0219090

Lora A Cavuoto, Ranjana K Mehta + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219090

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Abstract

The main goal of this study was to investigate the reliability of muscle strength across different levels of obesity. A sample of 142 healthy subjects performed maximum voluntary isometric contractions for shoulder flexion and trunk extension on each of four days. Subjects were recruited into one of three groups, non-obese, overweight, or obese, based on body mass index (BMI). Reliability of the strength measurements within each session and across the four sessions was determined from the intraclass correlation coefficient, coefficient of repeatability, coefficient of variation, and standard error of measurement. For the shoulder flexion measures, the coefficient of variation was < 10% and intraclass correlation coefficient was > 0.75. The absolute reliability of trunk extension strength measurement was rejected due to a high variability across sessions. For both tasks, comparable strengths across the BMI groups were found.

Highlights

Mixed findings have been reported in the literature on the effect of obesity on muscle strength
The lowest mean intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was for the obese female group for trunk extension
For the trunk extension task, while relative reliability remained substantial for most groups, the absolute reliability of the measures was not shown (CV% > 10% for all groups and coefficient of repeatability (CR) > 25 with large differences between groups)

Summary

Introduction

Mixed findings have been reported in the literature on the effect of obesity on muscle strength. Most studies have reported a higher absolute isometric strength of the trunk and lower extremity muscles [7,8,9,10,11], as well as upper extremity muscles [7, 12,13,14,15,16] with obesity. Some of these studies have reported conflicting results. Contrary to findings reported by Hulens et al [8] and Rolland et al [9], Kitagawa and Miyashita

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