Is BMI a valid measure of obesity in postmenopausal women?

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Body mass index (BMI) is a widely used indicator of obesity status in clinical settings and population health research. However, there are concerns about the validity of BMI as a measure of obesity in postmenopausal women. Unlike BMI, which is an indirect measure of obesity and does not distinguish lean from fat mass, dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) provides a direct measure of body fat and is considered a gold standard of adiposity measurement. The goal of this study is to examine the validity of using BMI to identify obesity in postmenopausal women relative to total body fat percent measured by DXA scan.

Methods

Data from 1,329 postmenopausal women participating in the Buffalo OsteoPerio Study were used in this analysis. At baseline, women ranged in age fr

SUBMITTER: Banack HR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5821529 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature