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Nutrition and Health (including climate and ecological aspects)

A new doubly labelled water anthropometry-based equation for prediction of total daily energy expenditure in older people from low- and middle-income countries

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 75, pages 1618–1626 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background

For community-living older people, the ability to estimate total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) with validated predictive equations based on anthropometry is limited. To our knowledge no studies exist for non-Caucasian populations

Objective

To design and validate an anthropometry-based equation to estimate TDEE using doubly-labelled water (DLW) as the criterion measure, and to assess the performance of three other published equations in community-living older people from rural and urban areas of Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Senegal, Cuba, and Mexico

Methods

This cross-sectional study measured anthropometry and TDEE using DLW in 69 men and 43 women aged 60–89 years. TDEE was also estimated with an anthropometry-based equation derived from the sub-sample of Mexico (n = 38) and with three other published equations. Predictive accuracy of the equations was tested by an external validation procedure

Results

TDEE by DLW in the six country sample was 2411 ± 41 kcal/day (mean ± SE) in men and 1939 ± 51 kcal/day in women. The best new Mexican equation was TDEE, kcal/d = [223.4 + (27.9 × weight, kg) + (239.7 × sex)]; where sex: Man = 1 and Woman = 0; having high precision; R2 = 0.89, lowest RMSE = 149.2, and Cp value of 2.0. This new Mexican equation estimated TDEE accurately in the five country sample and at country level after correction for Guatemalan older men, while the published equations performed poorly

Conclusions

The Mexican equation performed better that other published equations and is recommended to accurately estimate energy requirements for community-living older people in five Latin American and one African country.

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Fig. 1: Agreement between DLW method and prediction equations.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the volunteers in all the study countries and the many authorities responsible for the clinics and research centers where research was conducted. We also thank the Directors of all the participating institutions for supporting the study. In Mexico, we thank Alma E. Robles-Sardin, M.Sc., and Bertha I. Pacheco Moreno for their technical support, and Rogelio González Arellanes, M.Sc., for his critical review of the text. In Chile, we thank Alyerina Anziani, who performed the IRMS analyses for four countries.

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (Research contract No. 12694/R0).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Food and Development, (CIAD, A.C.) Hermosillo, Sonora, México

    Heliodoro Alemán-Mateo, Lesley Evelyn Antúnez-Roman, Julián Esparza-Romero & Mauro E. Valencia

  2. INCAP Research Center for the Prevention of Chronic Diseases (CIIPEC), Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), Guatemala City, Guatemala

    Julissa J. Salguero & Manuel Ramirez-Zea

  3. Department of Internal Medicine, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil

    Eduardo Ferriolli

  4. Laboratoire de Nutrition du Département de Biologie Animale. Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Dakar, Senegal

    Rose N. Ndour

  5. Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene (INHA), La Habana, Cuba

    Manuel Hernández-Triana

  6. Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA), Santiago, Chile

    Gabriela Salazar

  7. Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Elaine C. Rush

Authors
  1. Heliodoro Alemán-Mateo
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  10. Gabriela Salazar
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Contributions

The authors’ responsibilities were as follows—HAM, MRZ, EF, RNN: significantly contributed to research design; MRZ, HAM, EF, RNN, MEV, JER, MHT, LEAR and GS: significantly contributed to data collection; EF and GS: significantly contributed to sample analysis by IRMS and interpretation; HAM, and JER, significantly contributed to statistical analyses and interpretation of results; HAM significantly contributed to the writing paper; ER, MHT, GS, MRZ: significantly contributed to the editing of the final paper; MEV and ER were the expert consultants contracted by the IAEA.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heliodoro Alemán-Mateo.

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Alemán-Mateo, H., Antúnez-Roman, L.E., Esparza-Romero, J. et al. A new doubly labelled water anthropometry-based equation for prediction of total daily energy expenditure in older people from low- and middle-income countries. Eur J Clin Nutr 75, 1618–1626 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-021-00886-6

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