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  • Letter to the Editor
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Self-report corrections for BMI: Comment on Keith et al

International Journal of Obesity volume 36, page 1591 (2012)Cite this article

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We, the authors of two publications, one in the International Journal of Obesity and the other in BMC Public Health, write to correct points in each of these two articles.1, 2 The primary objective of the article by Keith et al.1 was to evaluate whether use of self-reported height and weight led to biases in the association between the mortality rate and obesity, and indeed such a result was the major finding of the paper. As an ancillary point, in the discussion section Keith et al. stated:

BMISR (self-reported body mass index) should not be considered a reliable source of information for estimating BMIM (measured BMI) with a regression model. This calls into question the validity of methods using self-reported heights and weights and other study variables, such as the methods proposed by Stommel and Schoenborn2 based on recent NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) data, to generate corrected BMI scores conditioned on BMISR. When we applied their method2 to NHANES III, although the corrected BMI scores did improve classification over uncorrected BMISR among the severely obese (increased sensitivity from 68 to 84%), they significantly exacerbated the misclassification problems among the underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese (sensitivity decreased from 58%, 91%, 80% and 62% to 3%, 30%, 31% and 47%, respectively). Compared with BMIM, the corrected BMI scores also increased the bias in estimating MR beyond that which we showed from using BMISR.

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References

  1. Keith SW, Fontaine KR, Pajewski NM, Mehta T, Allison DB . Use of self-reported height and weight biases the body mass index-mortality association. Int J Obes 2011; 35: 401–408.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Stommel M, Schoenborn CA . Accuracy and usefulness of BMI measures based on self-reported weight and height: findings from the NHANES & NHIS 2001-2006. BMC Public Health 2009; 9: 421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of pharmacology, Division of Biostatistics, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    S W Keith

  2. College of Nursing, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    M Stommel

  3. Department of Biostatistics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    D B Allison

  4. CDC/National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD, USA

    C A Schoenborn

Authors
  1. S W Keith
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  2. M Stommel
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  3. D B Allison
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  4. C A Schoenborn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S W Keith.

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Keith, S., Stommel, M., Allison, D. et al. Self-report corrections for BMI: Comment on Keith et al. Int J Obes 36, 1591 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.277

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