ARE HEALTH RISKS BETTER DISCRIMINATED BY GENERALIZED OBESITY OR CENTRAL OBESITY- A REPORTED RELATIONSHIP

Obesity is a well-documented risk factor for morbidity and mortality; they are also a major public health problem in many developing and developed countries. However, the association between body fat and pathology has not been fully elucidated. However, measures like body mass index (BMI), Waist height ratio (WHR), waist circumference (WC), waist height ratio (WHtR) and their differential association with excess body fat is still a debate. BMI is the most widely used traditional measure of describing general obesity, in recent years measures of central obesity like WC, WHR and WHtR have been suggested to more accurately describe the distribution of body fat and more closely associated to mortality and morbidity than BMI. There exist uncertainty about how these measures perform across diverse ethnic groups; most of the previous evidences and the cut off values of all these measures related to it associations with excess body fat and many non communicable illness has been chiefly derived from Caucasian populations. Hence, it remains unclear whether their relationships are consistent with non Caucasian populations. The purpose of this review is therefore to explore and narratively synthesize current evidences focusing on anthropometric measures and their health related predictive power, notable ethnic discriminations in their associations with conditions.