title: Sagittal abdominal diameter shows better correlation with cardiovascular risk factors than waist circumference and BMI.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Obesity (abdominal adiposity) is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and the most used methods to measure the adiposity are body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD).
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To correlate BMI, WC, and SAD with biochemical parameters and blood pressure in adults.
  
  
  METHODS
  A non-experimental exploratory/descriptive and cross sectional study was developed and it was assessed 133 subjects (59 men and 74 women) aging between 18 and 87 years. It was registered the patients' weight (kg), height (m), BMI (kg/m(2)), WC (cm) and SAD (cm), and these parameters were correlated with glycemia, triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL-c, LDL-c and blood pressure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After adjustment for gender and age, it was observed a positive correlation between SAD and systolic arterial blood pressure (r = 0.20), glycemia (r = 0.20), triglycerides (r = 0.32), LDL (r = 0.26), total cholesterol (TC) (r = 0.33), and a negative correlation with HDL-c (r = -0.21) (p < 0.05). It was observed a positive correlation between WC and systolic arterial blood pressure (r = 0.14), triglycerides (r = 0.31), total cholesterol (r = 0.21), and a negative correlation with HDL-c (r = -0.24) (p < 0.05). BMI showed a positive correlation with systolic arterial blood pressure (r = 0.22), total cholesterol (r = 0.20), and triglycerides (r = 0.23) (p < 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SAD correlated with almost all the cardiovascular risk factors analyzed and it might be considered the best predictor of abdominal fat and cardiovascular risk.
authors.affiliation: Paulista University (UNIP), Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Natalia Cavalheri
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: de Souza
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Federal University of Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
authors.forename: Erick Prado
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: de Oliveira
keywords: Blood pressure; Dyslipidemia; Glycemia; Sagittal abdominal diameter; Waist circumference