Agreement between equation-derived body fat estimator and bioelectrical impedance analysis for body fat measurement in middle-aged southern Indians

Abstract

Excess body fat (BF) contributes to metabolic syndrome (MetS). The Clínica Universidad de Navarra—Body Adiposity Estimator (CUN- BAE) is an equation-derived body fat estimator proposed to assess BF. However, its efficiency compared to the standard method is unknown. We aimed to compare the efficacy of CUN-BAE with the standard method in estimating BF in southern Indians. We included 351 subjects, with 166 MetS patients and 185 non-MetS subjects. BF was obtained from the standard bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) method and measured by CUN- BAE in the same subjects. We compared the efficacy of CUN- BAE in estimating BF with that of BIA via Bland–Altman plots, intraclass correlation coefficients, concordance correlation coefficients and the kappa index. The mean body fat percentage (BF%) values measured by BIA and CUN- BAE in all the subjects were 28.91 ± 8.94 and 29.22 ± 8.63, respectively. We observed significant absolute agreement between CUN- BAE and BIA for BF%. BIA and CUN- BAE showed good reproducibility for BF%. CUN- BAE had accuracy comparable to BIA for detecting MetS using BF%. Our findings indicate that CUN- BAE provides precise BF estimates similar to the BIA method, making it suitable for routine clinical practice when access to BF measurement devices is limited.