Correspondence

VOLUME 17 NUMBER 2 MARCH/APRIL 2004

Body mass index, waist circumference and waist–hip ratio: Findings from an urban
community survey, Tamil Nadu:

We read with interest the article by Kurpad et al. who evaluated the correlation between waist circumference and waist–hip ratio to body mass index (BMI).1 However, since this was a hospital-based study and the number of obese subjects was small, the results need to be confirmed in a larger population. In this context, we attempted to verify the relationship between BMI, waist circumference, waist–hip ratio and hip circumference among women >20 years of age using the urban data from our study on obesity among women in southern India by the Coimbatore Diabetes Foundation in 2003.

Our study was a community survey designed to quantify the problem of obesity, its relationship to eating pattern, physical activity, demographic pattern, reproductive health history, community perception of obesity and community awareness of complications of obesity among women >20 years of age. The urban sample was selected in two stages. Primary sampling units were wards selected randomly from the list of the intensive coverage area of the Urban Health Centre of P.S.G. Hospitals, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, followed in the second stage by selection of households using simple random sampling within each selected primary sampling unit. A total of 537 women were interviewed and examined.

The relationship between anthropometric measurements was analysed by calculating the Pearson product moment correlation coefficients using SPSS for Windows, version 10.1. Of the 311 overweight women (BMI >23 kg/m2), 241 (66.4%) had abdominal obesity according to the waist–hip ratio (lower cut-off >0.8) while 252 (86.3%) had obesity by the waist circumference criterion (lower cut-off >80 cm). The correlation between waist circumference and BMI was 0.731 (p<0.01), between hip circumference and BMI 0.704 (p<0.01) and waist–hip ratio and BMI 0.266 (p<0.01).
These results clearly indicate that waist circumference correlates better with BMI than waist–hip ratio and support the findings of Kurpad et al.
1 March 2004