Association between weight-adjusted waist index and bone mineral density in adolescents

Abstract The negative effects of obesity and excess body fat on bone mineral density (BMD) have been widely reported. As opposed to waist circumference (WC) or body mass index (BMI), weight-adjusted waist index (WWI) is a superior method for assessing obesity. WWI also indicates centripetal obesity independently of the weight of the individual. An investigation of WWI and adolescents’ BMD was conducted in this study. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011–2018 provided the data for this cross-sectional investigation. In this study, weighted multivariate logit models were employed to assess the correlation between teenage BMD and WWI. Additionally, we conducted interaction tests and subgroup analysis. Through multivariate linear regression, we discovered that WWI was negatively linked with lumbar, trunk, and total BMD but not pelvis BMD in this study, which included 6828 subjects. We found that each unit increase in WWI resulted in a lumbar BMD decline of 0.04 g/cm2 (95%CI −0.04, −0.04), a trunk BMD decrease of 0.03 g/cm2 (95%CI −0.03, −0.02), and a total BMD decrease of 0.02 g/cm2 (95%CI −0.02, −0.02). In conclusion, in US teenagers, there were negative connections discovered between WWI and lumbar, trunk, and total BMD, but not pelvis BMD.