Optimal cut-off values for anthropometric indices of obesity as discriminators of cardiovascular risk factors in a Health Examinees study: a cross-sectional study

Background Obesity is well known as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. We aimed to determine the performance of and the optimal cutoff value for obesity indices to discriminate the presence of cardiovascular risk factors in a Health Examinees study.Methods The current study analyzed 134,195 participants with complete anthropometric and laboratory information in a Health Examinees study. The presence of cardiovascular risk factors was defined as having at least one of the following: hypertension, hyperglycemia or hyperlipidemia. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for body mass index (BMI), waist to hip ratio (WHR), waist to height ratio (WHtR), waist circumference (WC) and conicity index (C index).Results AUC of cardiovascular risk factors was the highest for WHtR (0.677 [0.672-0.683] among men; 0.691 [0.687-0.694] among women), and the lowest for the C index (0.616 [0.611-0.622] among men; 0.645 [0.641-0.649] among women) among both men and women. The optimal cutoff values were 24.3kg/m 2 for BMI, 0.887 for WHR, 0.499 for WHtR, 84.4cm for WC and 1.20m 3/2 /kg 1/2 for the C index among men, compared with 23.4kg/m 2 for BMI, 0.832 for WHR, 0.496 for WHtR, 77.0 cm for WC and 1.18m 3/2 /kg 1/2 for the C index among women.Conclusion Obesity indices can be considered a plausible discriminator of metabolic risks.