Validation of a new index of body adiposity (BAI) to assess body fat in normal weight premenopausal Caucasian women

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Summary Background & aims Recently, a new index of body adiposity (BAI) calculated from height and hip circumference has been proposed. In this study we sought to validate BAI as an index of body fat assessment in 145 healthy, premenopausal, normal weight Caucasian women. Methods Using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as a reference method we measured percentage body fat (%BF) as well as abdominal and hip fat. Additionally %BF was measured by bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA). Results %BF as measured by two methods (DXA and BIA) was better correlated with waist than hip circumference. On the contrary, BAI showed a better correlation with hip circumference but was not correlated with the waist-to-hip ratio. BAI was only moderately correlated with %BF assessed by DXA ( R = 0.455) but weaker than the correlation using BIA ( R = 0.631) or BMI ( R = 0.601). In comparison with the reference method, BAI identified women with BF > 30% at high specificity (96%) but very low sensitivity (15%), whilst BIA had similar specificity (96%) but better sensitivity (35%). BAI showed a moderate correlation with abdominal fat (but weaker than the correlation using BIA). BF assessed by BAI and BIA correlated more weekly with abdominal ( R = 0.453; 0.618, respectively) and hip fat ( R = 0.459; R = 0.417, respectively) than BF assessed by DXA ( R = 0.893; 0.849, respectively). Conclusions In normal weight women BAI is a poor measure of %BF, comparable with BMI. Further studies are needed to develop more accurate, age- gender- and ethnicity-specific indices of total and visceral adiposity calculated from simple anthropometric measurements.