• Bianca Rodrigues de Oliveira, Maylla Luanna Barbosa Martins Bragança, Mônica Araújo Batalha, Carla Cristine Nascimento da Silva Coelho, Heloisa Bettiol, Marco Antônio Barbieri, Maria da Conceição Pereira Saraiva, Gilberto Kac, and da Silva Antônio Augusto Moura AAM Postgraduation Program of Collective Health, Department of Public Health, Federal University of Maranhão, São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil..
• Postgraduation Program of Collective Health, Department of Public Health, Federal University of Maranhão, São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil. Electronic address: oliveirarodrigues00@gmail.com.
• Nutrition. 2020 Nov 1; 79-80: 110950.

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic sensitivity of body mass index (BMI) in detecting obesity according to different cutoff points in order to classify a high body fat percentage (%BF) in adolescents and young adults.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional study conducted with 2447 adolescents 18 and 19 y of age residing in São Luís, Brazil and 951 young adults 21 to 23 y of age residing in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Three references were used to define a high %BF (i.e., those of Williams et al., Ramírez-Vélez et al., and Macias et al.). The area under the receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (AUC) was used to assess the performance of BMI.ResultsSensitivity ranged from 38.3% to 54.1% among boys and from 12.7% to 72.7% among girls. Among young adults, it ranged from 52.3% to 67.1% in men and from 33.7% to 86.6% in women. The AUC ranged from 0.69 to 0.76 among boys, from 0.56 from 0.85 among girls, from 0.75 to 0.80 among men, and from 0.67 to 0.88 among women. The best cutoff points for the BMI were 24.79 to 25.10 kg/m2 for boys, 21.89 to 27.04 kg/m2 for girls, 26.43 to 28.22 kg/m2 for men, and 23.34 to 29.28 kg/m2 for women.ConclusionThe use of different references for the classification of a high %BF implied a difference in the diagnostic sensitivity of the BMI. Higher cutoff points resulted in greater sensitivity and ability to differentiate individuals with and without obesity.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

5 keywords...

hide…