Predictive validity of the body adiposity index in costa rican students

Abstract

Objective: To verify the validity of the body adiposity index (BAI) in a sample of Costa Rican students. Methods: Volunteers were 93 females (mean age 5 18.6 6 2.4 years) and 106 males (mean age 5 19.2 6 2.8 years). Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used as the "gold standard" to determine body fat percentage (BF%). Pearson's correlation coefficient and paired samples t-test studied the association and mean differences between BAI and DXA BF%. Concordance between BAI and DXA BF% was determined by the Lin's concordance correlation coefficient and the Bland-Altman agreement analysis.Results: Significant correlations between BAI and DXA BF% were found for females (r 5 0.74) and males (r 5 0.53) (P < 0.001). Differences between methods were found for females (BAI 5 29.3 6 4.1% vs. DXA 5 36.5 6 7.9%) and males (BAI 5 24.8 6 3.7% vs. DXA 5 21.9 6 8.6%; P < 0.001). Concordance was poor in females and males. Bland-Altman plots showed BAI underestimating and overestimating BF% in relation to the "gold standard" in females and males, respectively.Conclusions: BAI presented low agreement with BF% measured by DXA; therefore, BAI is not recommended for BF% prediction in this Central American sample studied. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:394-397, 2016.

Predictive Validity of the Body Adiposity Index in Overweight and Obese Adults Using Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry

“…Emerging observational studies using BAI with overweight/obese adults yielded inconclusive results—with some criticizing the accuracy of BAI [15,16,17,18,19,20]. Thus, in light of these discrepancies (and given the high prevalence of excess adiposity in the Colombian population), in order to clarify the validity of BAI in predicting BF% among overweight and obese adults, we will conduct a cross-sectional study to evaluate the validity of BAI in a Latin American population.…”

“…In addition, it has been widely used in hospitals (i.e., patients with non-dialysed chronic kidney disease) [10] and research areas (i.e., patients with severe obesity from Brazil) [11]. Correlation coefficients between parameters of body composition assessed by BAI were highly related to those determined by DEXA or magnetic resonance imaging (r values between 0.62 and 0.96) [1,9,12,13], but several publications have criticized the accuracy of BAI [14,15]. However, depending of the population studied, results have been inconsistent.…”

“…Recently, validation and accuracy studies carried out in Costa Rica [15] and Brazil [16] included 199 college students (mean age, 18.1 ± 2.6 years) and 706 healthy adults (mean age, 37.3 ± 12.1 years), respectively. The results showed that BAI is not recommended for BF% prediction among Latinos [15,16].…”

“…The results showed that BAI is not recommended for BF% prediction among Latinos [15,16]. Given the risk of over-nutrition in developing countries, it is necessary to measure its prevalence in vulnerable populations such as Latin-American people to identify high-risk groups and develop preventive interventions [7,17].…”

“…There is a need for simple indicators of adiposity in the Latin American population, and such indexes may be especially useful to clinicians to estimate health risk or intervention effectiveness in obese adults. BAI was developed and validated in non-Caucasian subjects, and might be adequate in populations of Central [15] and South America [11,12]. To our knowledge, no previous study has compared BAI with DEXA in the detailed assessment of body composition for obese adults of the Colombian population [22,23].…”