Agreement between equation‐derived body fat estimator and bioelectrical impedance analysis for body fat measurement in middle‐aged southern Indians

Abstract

Abstract Excess body fat (BF) contributes to metabolic syndrome (MetS). The Clínica Universidad de Navarra—Body Adiposity Estimator (CUN‐BAE) is an equation‐derived body fat estimator proposed to assess BF. However, its efficiency compared to the standard method is unknown. We aimed to compare the efficacy of CUN‐BAE with the standard method in estimating BF in southern Indians. We included 351 subjects, with 166 MetS patients and 185 non‐MetS subjects. BF was obtained from the standard bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) method and measured by CUN‐BAE in the same subjects. We compared the efficacy of CUN‐BAE in estimating BF with that of BIA via Bland–Altman plots, intraclass correlation coefficients, concordance correlation coefficients and the kappa index. The mean body fat percentage (BF%) values measured by BIA and CUN‐BAE in all the subjects were 28.91 ± 8.94 and 29.22 ± 8.63, respectively. We observed significant absolute agreement between CUN‐BAE and BIA for BF%. BIA and CUN‐BAE showed good reproducibility for BF%. CUN‐BAE had accuracy comparable to BIA for detecting MetS using BF%. Our findings indicate that CUN‐BAE provides precise BF estimates similar to the BIA method, making it suitable for routine clinical practice when access to BF measurement devices is limited.

Keywords

• bioelectrical impedance analysis
• body composition
• body fat percentage
• cardiometabolic risk
• CUN‐BAE
• metabolic syndrome