Cent Eur J Public Health 2019, 27(2):131-134 | DOI: 10.21101/cejph.a5133

Normal-weight obesity frequency in the Central European urban adult female population of Brno, Czech Republic

Martin Čuta1,2, Klára Bařicová1, Dominik Černý1,2, Ondřej Sochor2
1 Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
2 International Clinical Research Centre, St. Anne᾿s University Hospital Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

Objectives: The universally recognized indicator of nutritional status, BMI, has some shortcomings, especially in detecting overweight and obesity. A relatively recently introduced normal weight obesity (NWO) describes a phenomenon when individuals are found to have normal weight as indicated by BMI but have an elevated percentage of body fat. Normal weight obese individuals face a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, cardiometabolic dysfunction and have higher mortality. No studies have been previously performed which would map NWO in Brno, Czech Republic.

Methods: In a sample of 100 women from Brno, we assessed the percentage of normal weight obese individuals using bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA) - three different analyzers were utilized: Tanita BC-545 personal digital scale, InBody 230 and BodyStat 1500MDD. Also, a caliperation method was used to estimate body fat percentage. Various body fat percentage cut-off points were used according to different authors.

Results: When the 30% body fat (BF) cut-off was used, up to 14% of the women in our sample were found to be normal weight obese. When the sum of skinfolds or the 35% BF cut-off point are selected as a criterion for identifying normal weight obesity (NOW), only 1 of 100 examined women was identified as normal weight obese; at the 35% BF cut-off, BodyStat analyzer categorized no women as normal weight obese. Also, when the 30% BF or 66th percentile BF cut-off points were utilized, BodyStat identified pronouncedly fewer women from our sample to be normal-weight obese than the two other analyzers.

Conclusions: On a pilot sample of Czech women, we demonstrated that depending on the selected cut-off (there is no clear agreement on cut-off points in literature), up to 14% of the examined women were found to be normal weight obese.

Keywords: normal weight obesity, body fat, bioimpedance, skinfolds, risk factor of cardiovascular disease

Received: May 10, 2017; Revised: May 24, 2019; Accepted: May 24, 2019; Published: June 26, 2019  Show citation

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Čuta M, Bařicová K, Černý D, Sochor O. Normal-weight obesity frequency in the Central European urban adult female population of Brno, Czech Republic. Cent Eur J Public Health. 2019;27(2):131-134. doi: 10.21101/cejph.a5133. PubMed PMID: 31241288.
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