Comparison of body adiposity index and body mass index for assessment of body fat percentage among office workers: A validation study
Abstract
Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of Body Mass Index (BMI) and Body Adiposity Index (BAI) in assessing body fat percentage among office workers.
Methods: This validation study was carried out among office workers in WAPDA center offices of three districts (Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra) in Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from July 2024 to December 2024.Two stage probability sampling was used to select the sample. Data were collected regarding sociodemographics, anthropometric measures, behavioural factors and body fat percentage was obtained through bioimpedance analysis. BMI and BAI were calculated and compared to body fat percentage derived from bioimpedance analysis (reference method).
Results: Overall BAI showed better sensitivity of 81% (95%CI =70.6% - 88.9%) than BMI. ROC analysis showed greater AUC value of 0.85 (95% CI=0.79-0.91) in males and 0.97 (95% CI=0.95-0.99) in females as compared to BMI (p < 0.05).Multiple linear regression showed age, weight and hip circumference to be positively associated with body fat percent (B values being 0.19, 0.28 and 0.33 respectively) while height, gender and physical activity were negatively associated with body fat percentage (B values -0.38,-0.43 and -0.26 respectively) (p<0.05).
Conclusions: BAI is a better predictor of body fat as compared to BMI among office workers and can replace BMI as a screening tool to measure body fat in community settings.
doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.41.6.11630
How to cite this: Habib R, Mashhadi SF, Javed A, Rathore MA. Comparison of body adiposity index and body mass index for assessment of body fat percentage among office workers: A validation study. Pak J Med Sci. 2025;41(6):1677-1682. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.41.6.11630
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
