Correlation between body mass index and anthropometric indexes of abdominal obesity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the correlation between body mass index and anthropometric indicators of abdominal obesity in a group of patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted with 130 type 2 diabetic patients followed in a reference institution in Fortaleza, Ceará. Patients answered a semi-structured formcontaining demographic and socioeconomic data, with the measures of weight, height and waist circumference (WC). We calculated the body mass index (BMI) to identify general obesity, according to parameters of the World Health Organization. Abdominal obesity was identified based on the indicators CC, waist / height (WH) and conicity index (CI). We used the Student t test and Mann-Whitney test for comparison of averages and chi-square test for proportions. The correlation between BMI and other indicators was evaluated by Spearman coefficient. We adopted a significance level of 5%. Results: The study group was predominantly female 72 (55.4%) with a mean age of 60.8 ± 10.0 years. The overall obesity was present in 42 (32.3%) subjects, while abdominal obesity appeared in 110 (84.6%), 112 (86.2%) and 119 (91.5%), according to the CI, the CC and WH, respectively. The CC (p <0.001) and WH (p <0.001) were presented correlated with BMI, but not the CI (p = 0.084) in men (p <0.001, p <0.001 and p = 0.378 for CC, WH and CI, respectively) and females (p <0.001, p <0.001 and p = 0.090). Conclusion: The BMI showed positively correlated with waist circumference and waist / height, but not with the conicity index

Keywords

• Waist Circumference
• Body Mass Index
• Abdominal Obesity
• Anthropometry
• Diabetes Mellitus