Are body mass indices interchangeable in measuring obesity-disease associations?
We examined data on body weight and height from 55 male and 26 female lung cancer cases and up to 10 sex-ethnicity-age matched controls per case from a large prospective cohort. All four body mass indices (W/H, W/H2, W/Hp) were highly intercorrelated. Conditional logistic regression, using each index as the exposure variable, yielded odds ratios for lung cancer with magnitude and dose-response gradient that were somewhat different among the four indices. These results suggest that the body mass indices are not necessarily interchangeable in measuring obesity-disease associations.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001827:Body Height; D001835:Body Weight; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006254:Hawaii; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000209:etiology*; D011446:Prospective Studies