Development and Validation of a Skin Fold Thickness Prediction Equation for Asian Indians Using Hydrodensitometry

There is increasing evidence that the associations between body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (body fat %) and body fat distribution differ across populations [1].Particularly in the Asian population, a specific BMI reflects a higher percentage of body fat than in white or European populations [1].Obesity is defined as an excessive amount of adipose tissue with body fat % ≥ 25% in males, ≥32% in females [2].BMI which is essentially weight (kg)/ height 2 (m 2 ), is a measure of relative weight and is an acceptable proxy for thinness and fatness and has been directly related to health risks and death rates in many populations [1].Thus BMI is often used as a surrogate measure of obesity, because of the difficulties in accurately estimating body fat %, though BMI fails to distinguish between body fat and lean mass.Considering the relation of BMI cut offs with health risks, the cut off values for obesity using BMI were established as BMI ≥ 25 kg/m 2 (WHO) [1] and for Asians was recently revised from 25 kg/m 2 to 23 kg/m 2 in adults [3].A meta-analysis of 32 different samples comprising a total of 31,968 patients revealed that the commonly used BMI cut off values to diagnose obesity failed to identify half of the people with excess PBF [4,5].Recently a study by Zeng et al. 2012 [5] demonstrated that percent body fat was a better predictor of cardiovascular risk factors than BMI in a Chinese population.