ORIGINAL ARTICLES  BODY COMPOSITION, SPORT NUTRITION AND SUPPLEMENTATION 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2011 September;51(3):426-34

Copyright © 2011 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Quality control of 157 whole body adiposity prediction formulae in age and activity matched men

Provyn S. ^{1, 2}, Scafoglieri A. ¹, Tresignie J. ¹, Bautmans I. ³, Reilly T. ⁴, Clarys J. P. ¹ ✉

¹ Department of Experimental Anatomy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; ² Department of Anatomy, Morphology and Biomechanics, Haute École P.H. Spaak, Brussels, Belgium; ³ Frailty in Ageing Research Department,Vrije Universiteit BrusselBrussels, Belgium; ⁴ Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England

AIM AND METHODS. The physiological and clinical importance of body composition is part of public health, nutrition and Sports medicine. The most popular field method for estimating total body adiposity remains anthropometry separately or in formulae. The aim of this study was to verify the suitability of an absolute maximum out of more than 600 existing anthropometry equations estimating % adipose tissue (AT) in a cross validation with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and hydrodensitometry (HD) on 74 British male subjects (mean age 34.4±14.1) with different lifestyles corresponding to a maximum of populations the original formula was developed for.
RESULTS:Pearson correlation coefficients, paired sample t-test and Bland and Altman plots where used for analyses. From the tested formulae, 19 correlated well (r≥0.70) and showed no significant difference (p>0.05) with BIA, 15 with DXA and only 12 with HD. The results show a better match of the predicted % AT by anthropometric equations with BIA then with DXA or HD.
CONCLUSION: All results and conditions considered, this study suggest not to use HD nor anthropometric formulae to assess % AT in men for an individual estimation.