Sagittal abdominal diameter and waist circumference appear to be equally good as identifiers of cardiometabolic risk

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) are commonly used markers of cardiometabolic risk. However, sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD) has been proposed as a possibly more sensitive marker of intra-abdominal obesity. We investigated differences in how SAD, WC, and BMI were correlated with cardiometabolic risk markers.

METHODS AND RESULTS: This cross-sectional study investigated anthropometric and metabolic baseline measurements of individuals from six trials. Multiple linear regression and (partial) correlation coefficients were used to investigate associations between SAD, WC, and BMI and cardiometabolic risk markers, including components of the metabolic syndrome as well as insulin resistance, blood lipids, and lowgrade inflammation. In total 1516 mostly overweight or obese individuals were included in the study. SAD was significantly more correlated with TG than WC for all studies, and overall increase in correlation was 0.05 (95% CI (0.02; 0.08). SAD was significantly more correlated with the markers TG and DBP 0.11 (95% CI (0.08, 0.14)) and 0.04 (95% CI (0.006, 0.07), respectively compared to BMI across all or most studies.

CONCLUSION: This study showed that no single anthropometric indicator was consistently more strongly correlated across all markers of cardiometabolic risk. However, SAD was significantly more strongly correlated with TG than WC and significantly more strongly correlated with DBP and TG than BMI.