Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Waist circumference is a simple and valuable anthropometric measure of total and intra-abdominal body fat. 1 The clinical guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults recommend that clinicians assess waist circumference of their patients. 2Although the prevalence of abdominal obesity has increased in the United States through 2008, 3 its trend in recent years is unknown.Therefore, our objective was to provide recent information about the trends in mean waist circumference and prevalence of abdominal obesity among adults in the United States from 1999 to 2012.Methods | We used data from seven 2-year cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) starting with 1999-2000 and concluding with 2011-2012. 4NHANES is a national health survey of the civilian noninstitutionalized US population in which a sample is selected by using a complex, multistage, probability sampling design.The examination re-sponse rates across the survey cycles ranged from 69.5% to 79.6%.The surveys received institutional review board approval and participants provided written informed consent.In the mobile examination center, the waist circumference of participants was measured just above the iliac crest to the nearest 1 mm using a steel measuring tape.Abdominal obesity was defined as a waist circumference greater than 102 cm in men and greater than 88 cm in women. 2 Because the unadjusted and age-adjusted results were similar, we report only the latter.Tests for linear trend were conducted using orthogonal polynomial coefficients.Analyses, which take into account the complex sampling design of the surveys, were conducted using SAS version 9.3 (SAS Institute Inc) and SUDAAN version 11.0.0 (Research Triangle Institute) software.Two-sided P < .05 was considered statistically significant.
Ford et al. (Wed,) studied this question.