Estimating visceral fat area by multifrequency bioelectrical impedance.
OBJECTIVE
We developed a new method of estimating visceral fat area (VFA) using multifrequency bioelectrical impedance (BI).


METHODS
We considered abdominal composition as a parallel circuit model composed of VFA and subcutaneous fat area and calculated the impedance of VFA (IP(VFA)) from this model. The methods were tested against measures of VFA by computed tomography (CT). Multiple regression analysis was performed on 103 participants to estimate VFA. We cross-validated the regression equation against CT-measured VFA in 30 additional participants.


RESULTS
The regression equation was VFA = 3.57 x sagittal abdominal diameter + 311.97 x waist-to-height ratio + 0.71 x age + 23.93 x sex + 1.57 x IP(VFA) (250 kHz) - 174.35 (r = 0.904, P < 0.01). We observed a strong correlation by cross-validation (r = 0.905).


CONCLUSIONS
Our method using BI is a simple and convenient method for accurately estimating VFA.
Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. komiya@cc.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp
Masato
M
Nagai
Hideaki
H
Komiya
Yutaka
Y
Mori
Teruo
T
Ohta
Yasuhiro
Y
Kasahara
Yoshio
Y
Ikeda
D000005:Abdomen; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000886:Anthropometry / Q000379:methods*; D017097:Electric Impedance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D050152:Intra-Abdominal Fat / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D050151:Subcutaneous Fat / Q000473:pathology; D055815:Young Adult