Comparison of Waist-to-height Ratio (WHtR), Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist Circumference (WC) as a Screening Tool for Prediction of Metabolic-related Diseases

Abstract

The present study showed WHtR to be significantly better than BMI and WC for prediction of metabolic-related diseases in the middle-aged and older people in Korea, based on Bayesian ordered probit model analysis. The variations of WC, BMI and WHtR were compared according to the number of metabolic-related diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, stroke, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris and diabetes. It was found that the three measures showed the similar variation except a very few extreme cases for age less than 40. For subjects over the age of 40, WC was not significant and WHtR gave more influence in greater variability than BMI on the number of metabolic diseases. Also, the rate of change for WHtR was higher than for BMI as the number of metabolic-related diseases increased. Specifically, the difference of the marginal effect of WHtR between no disease and only one disease was 1.81 times higher than that of BMI. Moreover, it was pointed out that the threshold value of WHtR for obesity should be considered differently by age.