Assessing truncal obesity in predicting cardiometabolic risk in children: clinical measures versus dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

AIM: The objectives of this study were to 1) compare the accuracy of waist:hip ratio (WHR) and waist:height ratio (WHtR) by determining their association with reference-standard measures derived from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and 2) assess the relationship of DXA, WHR and WHtR to measures of dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and inflammation in children.

METHODS: Subjects aged four to 21 were prospectively recruited. Truncal obesity by DXA was defined as the trunk fat:height ratio and trunk fat:nontrunk fat ratio. Three hundred and eight subjects were studied, and 246 (80%) were obese.

RESULTS: There was a strong correlation between WHtR and trunk fat:height (r = 0.84, p < 0.01). DXA measures of truncal obesity had stronger correlations with measures of cardiometabolic risk than WHR and WHtR. Upon multivariable regression, only WHtR had independent associations with cholesterol/HDL, HOMA-IR and high-sensitivity c-reactive protein.

CONCLUSION: WHtR is an accurate measure of truncal obesity. WHtR showed stronger associations with measures of insulin resistance and truncal obesity than WHR.