Personal assessments of body phenotype can enhance success in weight management but are limited by the lack of availability of practical methods. We describe a novel smart phone application of digital photography (DP) and determine its validity to estimate fat mass (FM). This approach utilizes the percent (%) occupancy of an individual lateral whole-body digital image and regions indicative of adipose accumulation associated with increased risk of cardio-metabolic disease. We measured 117 healthy adults (63 females and 54 males aged 19 to 65 years) with DP and dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and report here the development and validation of this application. Inter-observer variability of the determination of % occupancy was 0.02%. Predicted and reference FM values were significantly related in females (R2 = 0.949, SEE = 2.83) and males (R2 = 0.907, SEE = 2.71). Differences between predicted and measured FM values were small (0.02 kg, p = 0.96 and 0.07 kg, p = 0.96) for females and males, respectively. No significant bias was found; limits of agreement ranged from 5.6 to −5.4 kg for females and from 5.6 to −5.7 kg for males. These promising results indicate that DP is a practical and valid method for personal body composition assessments.

The authors wish to make the following corrections to Table 1 of their paper [...]

Interleukin-1 is one of pro-inflammatory responses and plays an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. The gene of this cytokine is highly polymorphic, one of which is located on 5´flanking region at position -511 (rs16944, A-511 G). This allele encodes IL-1 protein with less activity in comparison with wild type. In this research, 40 number of professional athletes in futsal and volleyball fields have been studied in their anthropometric and physiological indexes and also IL-1 genetic polymorphisms. Our results show that in subjects carrying IL-1 A (-) SNP or wild type allele, the weight, body fat and some other physiological indexes have been increased. This might have relation with elevated plasma level of leptin which is conducted by IL-1 A (-) allele. These findings suggest a remarkable relation between genetic polymorphisms of IL-1 gene and physical potential of athletes.