Is Body Adiposity Index a Better and Easily Applicable Measure for Determination of Body Fat?

Abstract

Objective: The BAI can be used to reflect %body fat. This study aimed to compare BAI with other methods used in the determination of body fat.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Turkish adults. BAI, BMI, WHR, WHtR, body weight, hip and waist circumference (WC), skinfold thicknesses (biceps, triceps, subscapular, suprailiac) were measured. Body fat was measured using Bioelectric Impedance Analysis.

Results: The Bland-Altman analyses conducted in this study showed that for % body fat estimations, BIA was in excellent agreement with skinfold measurements (p = 0.131) without proportional bias (p = 0.082), but that BAI was not in agreement with BIA and skinfold measurement. There were a statistically significant positive correlation between BAI and other measurements in terms of females and males and also regardless of sex.

Conclusion: BAI was not in agreement with BIA and skinfold measurement methods for % body fat estimations, it had a significantly stronger correlation with % fat calculated using BIA and skinfold thickness.

Keywords:

• Adiposity
• obesity
• body adiposity index
• anthropometry
• body composition

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by Baskent University Institutional Review Board (Project no: KA13/321).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.