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Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in type 2 diabetes mellitus. We evaluated the predictive ability of the recently developed body adiposity index for aortic stiffness, an intermediate endpoint of cardiovascular disease, in a cross-sectional multi-ethnic Asian type 2 diabetes mellitus cohort (N = 1408). AS was estimated using carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity measured by applanation tonometry. Body adiposity index was computed as hip circumference/(height)(1.5) - 18. Compared to body mass index, waist circumference and visceral fat area, body adiposity index displayed the weakest association with pulse wave velocity (r = 0.077, 0.096, 0.134 and 0.058, respectively; all p < 0.05). Interestingly, the relationship between measurements of obesity and pulse wave velocity was ethnic dependent - body mass index, body adiposity index, waist circumference and visceral fat area consistently predicted pulse wave velocity only in Indians but not others. In multi-variable analysis, body mass index was a significant determinant of pulse wave velocity in all ethnicities. In conclusion, body adiposity index is a weak predictor of aortic stiffness (when compared with body mass index) in Asians with type 2 diabetes mellitus., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Objective: A recently developed parameter, the body adiposity index (BAI)-a composite index based on hip circumference and height-estimates the percentage (%) body adiposity indirectly. The BAI was compared with dual energy X-ray absorptiometer (DEXA)-derived % adiposity to validate the BAI in the local Chinese population., Design and Methods: 105 Chinese were recruited and % adiposity estimated by BAI was compared with that derived from DEXA using the Bland Altman plot. A correlation study comparing the BAI with body mass index (BMI) was also done., Results: BAI underestimated DEXA-derived % adiposity by a mean of 5.77% with 95% limits of agreement of ±8.4%. When stratified by gender, BMI correlated with DEXA-derived % adiposity better than BAI (r = 0.81 vs. 0.74 for males, P = 0.088, and r = 0.87 vs. 0.82 for females, P = 0.087). Hip circumference and waist circumference also correlated better with the BMI than BAI (r = 0.94 vs. 0.71 for hip circumference, P < 0.001, and r = 0.93 vs. 0.50 for waist circumference, P < 0.001, respectively)., Conclusions: The BAI underestimates DEXA-derived % adiposity in a Chinese population in Singapore and is unlikely to be a better overall index of adiposity than the established BMI., (Copyright © 2013 The Obesity Society.)