Association of Anthropometric Measurement Methods with Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Turkey

Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the predictive power of anthropometric indices for risk of developing Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) or CHD death. Methods: We used cross-sectional data from nationally representative Chronic Diseases and Risk Factors Survey conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2011. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist to height ratio (WHtR), body adiposity index (BAI) and A Body Shape Index (ABSI) formed the anthropometric measures. For each participant risk of developing CHD or dying from CVDs were calculated based on Framingham and SCORE risk equations. Predictive ability of anthropometric measurements was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: Anthropometric measurements of central obesity recorded higher area under the ROC curve (AUC) values than BMI in both men and women. While ABSI had the highest AUC values for Framingham 10-year predicted risk (FRS) for CHD death (AUC = 0.613), SCORE 10-year risk for CVD death (AUC = 0.633), in women AUC for ABSI was the highest for only SCORE risk threshold (AUC = 0.705). Among women, WHtR was found to be the best indicator for estimating CHD incidence (AUC = 0.706) and death from CVD (AUC = 0.696). Conclusion: Compared to traditional anthropometric measurements such as BMI, ABSI was a better indicator for given thresholds for estimating the risk of developing CHD and CVD death in men. Among women WHtR made better predictions for FRS thresholds, however, ABSI was better for predicting 10-year risk of CVD death calculated by SCORE risk equation. Key words: Obesity, Framingham risk score, coronary heart disease