Another way to measure obesity

Traditionally, Body Mass Index (BMI) has been used to measure obesity. Now, scientists propose a novel method that includes waist circumference (WC) in addition to BMI, providing better information about the risk of premature death for an individual. Known as A Body Shape Index (ABSI), the metric was tested on national health and nutrition data from 14,000 adults in the United States. This new parameter is based on WC adjusted for height and weight and was found to show a better correlation with death rate than does the BMI.

Death rates increased approximately exponentially with above average baseline ABSI, whereas elevated death rates were found for both high and low values of BMI and WC. The association of death rate with ABSI held even when adjusted for other known risk factors including smoking, diabetes, blood pressure, and serum cholesterol. ABSI correlation with mortality hazard held across the range of age, sex, and BMI, and for both white and black ethnicities (but not for Mexican ethnicity), and was not weakened by excluding deaths from the first 3 yr of follow-up.

Source: PloS ONE