European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2014) 68, 972 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved 0954-3007/14 www.nature.com/ejcn
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Is inverted BMI really better than BMI in predicting body fatness in children? European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2014) 68, 972; doi:10.1038/ ejcn.2014.124; published online 2 July 2014 I read with interest the article titled ‘Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children’ published in your journal in the current issue.1 In the article, the authors have compared body mass index (BMI) and inverted BMI (iBMI) as predictors of body fatness in 177 Portuguese children (149 girls and 96 boys) aged 7–16 years. This has been adjusted for the maturation of children. They found a significant relationship between BMI and fat mass index (FMI; r = 0.970, P = 0.0001) using Pearson’s product moment correlations. We conducted a study on Asian Indian women (17–23 years) and found that both BMI and FMI were significantly correlated with one another (r = 0.978, Po 0.001) using Pearson’s coefficient of correlation. Both BMI and FMI were also significantly correlated (Po 0.001) with body fat percent (r = 0.939 and 0.978, respectively) determined using bioelectrical impedance.2 The authors of the article found that the inverted BMI predicted a slightly greater amount of variance in body fat percent (97%) than BMI (96.8%) by using analysis of covariance. They concluded in the abstract that ‘iBMI is a similar proxy for body fatness compared with BMI in children’. However, the title of the study
‘Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children’ seems to contradict the conclusion drawn in the study. The title can be misleading to the readers of the article. As the difference in the variance between iBMI and BMI with body fat percent is only 0.2%, the title of the study does not justify the conclusion drawn in the study. CONFLICT OF INTEREST The author declares no conflict of interest.
N Singhal Department of Food and Nutrition, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India E-mail: [email protected] REFERENCES 1 Duncan MJ, Martins C, Silva G, Marques E, Mota J, Aires L. Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children. Eur J Clin Nutr 2014; 68: 638–640. 2 Singhal N, Mathur P, Pathak R. Validity of simple, novel measures of generalized and central obesity among young Asian Indian women. Indian J Med Sci 2011; 65: 518–527.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Is inverted BMI really better than BMI in predicting body fatness in children? European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2014) 68, 972; doi:10.1038/ ejcn.2014.124; published online 2 July 2014 I read with interest the article titled ‘Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children’ published in your journal in the current issue.1 In the article, the authors have compared body mass index (BMI) and inverted BMI (iBMI) as predictors of body fatness in 177 Portuguese children (149 girls and 96 boys) aged 7–16 years. This has been adjusted for the maturation of children. They found a significant relationship between BMI and fat mass index (FMI; r = 0.970, P = 0.0001) using Pearson’s product moment correlations. We conducted a study on Asian Indian women (17–23 years) and found that both BMI and FMI were significantly correlated with one another (r = 0.978, Po 0.001) using Pearson’s coefficient of correlation. Both BMI and FMI were also significantly correlated (Po 0.001) with body fat percent (r = 0.939 and 0.978, respectively) determined using bioelectrical impedance.2 The authors of the article found that the inverted BMI predicted a slightly greater amount of variance in body fat percent (97%) than BMI (96.8%) by using analysis of covariance. They concluded in the abstract that ‘iBMI is a similar proxy for body fatness compared with BMI in children’. However, the title of the study
‘Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children’ seems to contradict the conclusion drawn in the study. The title can be misleading to the readers of the article. As the difference in the variance between iBMI and BMI with body fat percent is only 0.2%, the title of the study does not justify the conclusion drawn in the study. CONFLICT OF INTEREST The author declares no conflict of interest.
N Singhal Department of Food and Nutrition, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India E-mail: [email protected] REFERENCES 1 Duncan MJ, Martins C, Silva G, Marques E, Mota J, Aires L. Inverted BMI rather than BMI is a better predictor of DEXA determined body fatness in children. Eur J Clin Nutr 2014; 68: 638–640. 2 Singhal N, Mathur P, Pathak R. Validity of simple, novel measures of generalized and central obesity among young Asian Indian women. Indian J Med Sci 2011; 65: 518–527.
