Sensitivity and specificity of waist circumference as a screening tool for assessment of obesity in rural population

Abstract

Context: Prevalence of obesity increasing worldwide, including in the rural populations. Waist circumference (WC) and body mass index (BMI) are closely related in measuring obesity. Measuring WC is easier than measuring height and weight for calculating BMI. Therefore, WC measurement can be used as obesity detecting tool. Aims: The aim of the study is to estimate the prevalence of obesity in a rural population and to assess the sensitivity and specificity of WC values for identifying obesity. Settings and Design: It was a cross-sectional study conducted in rural places of North Karnataka. Material and Methods: Height, weight, and WC of each participant were measured. WC was measured at the midpoint between the inferior margin of the last rib and iliac crest. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical analyses were performed using MedCalc for Windows. The area under the receiver operating characteristics derived by plotting 100 specificity along the X-axis and sensitivity along the Y-axis. Results: Abdominal obesity measured by WC showed that 114 participants were obese with a prevalence of 36.08%. Prevalence of obesity by taking BMI of ≥25 kg/m2 as cutoff showed 15.82%. We found that presently recommended WC cutoff value for males had 66.67% sensitivity and for females had 89.47% sensitivity to diagnose obesity. Conclusions: WC can be used as screening tool for identifying obesity. Considerable variation in sensitivity was found among different studies. Unlike BMI, universal cutoff may not be possible with WC. More studies are needed to assess the relationship of different obesity surrogates to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Keywords

• body mass index
• obesity
• prevalence
• rural
• waist