Visceral obesity in the normal-weight people-comparing chronic schizophrenia and healthy control subjects

Background: People living with Schizophrenia are often associated with obesity due to a fairly sedentary lifestyle.However, there are less study findings about body composition of normal weight chronic schizophrenia inmates.The aim of this study is to compare body composition variables between normal weight chronic schizophrenia inmates and age-gender matched healthy control subjects in Malaysia.Methods: People with chronic schizophrenia, based on DSM-IV, and with normal weight were recruited from the pool of patients in a large hospital.Body fat percentage (%), Body fat mass (kg), fat free mass (kg), body muscle mass (kg), visceral fat rating and total body water were measured using bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) method.Comparative analysis was performed between the normal BMI schizophrenia inmates and healthy control subjects.Results: There were 247 consented subjects with normal BMI (164 males and 83 females).Their age range between 18-91 years old (mean/SD=58+13.17)were compared to 64 normal weight healthy controls (25 males and 39 females (mean/SD=34 ± 10.87) years old; age range of 21-58 years old.Among males, fat free mass and body muscle mass are significantly higher in normal BMI healthy control subjects compared to chronic schizophrenia inmates (p-value <0.05).Among females, fat free mass and body muscle mass are significantly higher in normal BMI healthy control subjects compared to chronic schizophrenia inmates.Meanwhile, visceral fat rating is significantly higher in normal BMI chronic schizophrenia inmates than healthy controls for both males and females with Mean ± SD (8 ± 2.91 and 7 ± 1.58) respectively.Age, weight, were significant for the schizophrenic inmates (both gender), whist only BMI was significantly higher in male healthy control subjects (p<0.05)Conclusions: The findings show that normal BMI schizophrenia patients have higher visceral fat rating and lower fat free mass and body muscle mass compared to healthy controls.In addition, the longer the duration of illness the higher the visceral fat rating among the inmates.These results indicate that community rehabilitation program should be individualised even for Chronic Schizophrenia with normal BMI, to ensure better health and wellbeing.