Assessment of Body Fat Percentage in Emirati Females: A Comparative Analysis of BIA vs DXA

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Obesity is a significant health issue in the UAE. Accurate body composition assessment is crucial for managing obesity-related health risks. This study aimed to evaluate the agreement between Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) and Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) in measuring body fat percentage (%BF) among Emirati females. Subjects/Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 95 healthy Emirati females aged 17–27 years. Paired samples t-tests, correlation analyses, and Bland-Altman plots were used to compare the two methods. Results BIA significantly underestimated %BF and fat mass (FM) while overestimating fat-free mass (FFM) compared to DXA. The mean difference in %BF was − 14.1% (p < 0.001), and the mean difference in FFM was + 8.2 kg (p < 0.001). Despite strong correlations between BIA and DXA measurements (r = 0.855 for %BF, r = 0.984 for FM, and r = 0.929 for FFM), Bland-Altman plots indicated poor agreement, with wide limits of agreement. Conclusions BIA remains valuable for obesity assessment in large-scale studies and clinical settings due to its non-invasive, easy-to-use, and cost-effective characteristics. The results show that the in-built prediction equations cannot adequately predict the %fat, FM, and FFM for this sample. Future research should focus on developing and validating BIA-specific equations tailored for Emiratis.