Study on correlation of abdominal height with visceral fat area and the cutoff points to predict abdominal adiposity

Totally 177 individuals (87 males and 90 females), who took abdominal computer tomography were enrolled. Anthropometric surrogates such as abdominal height(AH), waist circumference(WC), body mass index(BMI), and waist to height ratio(WHtR) were measured. Correlations between AH, WC, BMI, and WHtR with visceral abdominal fat were analyzed, and receiver operating characteristic curves(ROC)were prepared for detecting abdominal adiposity at or beyond 80cm2 using lumbar vertebra 4-5 cross-section visceral fat areas as the screening cut-point within gender separately. Youden's index was used to determine cut-off values of AH, WC, BMI, and WHtR by which to classify excess abdominal fat. 70(80.5%) males and 59(65.9%) females had abdominal obesity. Compared to other anthropometic indicators, AH presented the highest correlation with visceral adipose fat. The pearson correlation efficiencies were 0.825 and 0.732, the cut-off points were 20 cm and 20.3 cm in male and female respectively. After controlling for age, receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that AH, followed by WHtR, outperformed WC and BMI in identifying central obesity participants. Optimal cut-off values of the physical anthropometric indices to indentify abdominal adiposity were 20 cm(AH), and 91 cm(WC) 25 kg/m2(BMI), and 0.52(WHtR) for men, and 20.3 cm(AH), 86.5 cm(WC), 25 kg/m2(BMI), and 0.54(WHtR) for women. AH is effective for predicting visceral adiposity and might be considered the best predictor of abdominal obesity at a cut-point of 20cm in Chinese adults. (Chin J Endocrinol Metab, 2015, 31: 136-139) Key words: Abdominal height; Visceral fat; Waist circumference; Body mass index; Waist-to-height ratio