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Relationship of total body fatness and five anthropometric indices in Chinese aged 20–40 years: different effects of age and gender

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 60, pages 511–518 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Objectives:

We aim to evaluate the ethnic-specific relationship of total fat mass and anthropometric indices in Chinese.

Design:

Cross-section study.

Setting:

This study was performed at the College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, P.R. China.

Subjects and method:

To increase our understanding of the relationship of total fat mass and anthropometric indices in Chinese, 793 females and 1091 males aged 20–40 years were randomly recruited from Changsha city of P. R. China. Hip circumference (HC) and waist circumference (WC) were measured using standardized equipments, and other three anthropometric indices of body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and conicity index (CI) were calculated using weight, height, HC and WC. Total body fatness (TBF) in kg was measured using a Hologic QDR 4500 W dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanner.

Results:

There was an increasing trend of TBF, %TBF (percent total body fatness) and the five anthropometric indices in successively older age groups. Compared with females, males generally had high average BMI, WC, HC, WHR and CI, but had low average TBF and %TBF. Except for some correlations in 25–29 years age groups, TBF and %TBF were significantly correlated with five anthropometric indices with the Pearson's correlation coefficients ranging from 0.07 to 0.87. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to form four principal components (PCs) that interpreted over 99% of the total variation of the five related anthropometric indices in all age groups, with over 53% of the total variation accounted for by the PC1. Multiple regression analyses showed that four PCs combined explained a greater variance (R2=55.2–80.8%) in TBF than did BMI alone (R2=40–74.9%).

Conclusion:

Our results suggest that there is an increasing trend of total fat mass and five anthropometric indices with aging; that age and sex have the important effects on influencing the correlations of TBF and the studied anthropometric indices; and that the accuracy of predicting the TBF using five anthropometric indices is higher than using BMI alone.

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Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments to improve this paper. The study was partially supported by a key project grant (30230210), a general grant (30470534) from National Science Foundation of China, three projects from Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (02A027, 03C226, 04B039), and a grant from Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (04JJ1004). Investigator H.W.D. was partially supported by grants from Health Future Foundation of USA, grants of National Health Institute (K01 AR02170-01A2, R01 GM60402 and 5R01 AR050496-02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Molecular and Statistical Genetics, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, P.R. China

    S-F Lei, M-Y Liu, X-D Chen, F-Y Deng, W-X Jian, H Xu, L-J Tan, Y-J Yang, Y-B Wang, S-M Xiao, X Sun, C Jiang, Y-F Guo, J-J Guo, Y-N Li & H-W Deng

  2. Department of Bioengineering, College of Huaihua, Huaihua, Hunan, P.R. China

    J-H Lv

  3. Osteoporosis Research Center and Department of Biomedical Sciences, Creighton University Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA

    Y-J Liu & H-W Deng

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  1. S-F Lei
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to H-W Deng.

Additional information

Guarantor: H-W Deng.

Contributors: SFL was responsible for the data analysis and writing of the manuscript. HWD is principal investigator and contributed to the study design and its implementation. YJL was involved in the revision of the manuscript. Other coauthors participated in sample recruitment, data preparation or manuscript preparation.

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Lei, SF., Liu, MY., Chen, XD. et al. Relationship of total body fatness and five anthropometric indices in Chinese aged 20–40 years: different effects of age and gender. Eur J Clin Nutr 60, 511–518 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602345

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