Review Article
Year: 2020 | Month: September | Volume: 7 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 303-312
A Body Shape Index (ABSI) - Is It Time to Replace Body Mass Index?
Snigdha Sharma1, Pradeep Bokariya2, Ruchi Kothari3
1Third (2) MBBS student , Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, SEVAGRAM, Wardha (Maharashtra) - 442102
2Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, SEVAGRAM, Wardha (Maharashtra) – 442102
3Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, SEVAGRAM, Wardha (Maharashtra) – 442102
Corresponding Author: Snigdha Sharma
ABSTRACT
Obesity has been typically quantified in terms of Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) is used as a risk indicator supplementary to BMI, but the high correlation of WC with BMI makes it hard to isolate the added value of WC. Though, BMI is widely used as a measure of overweight and obesity, it underestimates the prevalence of the two, leading to the underdiagnosis of patients at risk and there are data questioning BMI reliability and indicating that it provides a false diagnosis of body fatness. In such a scenario, the importance of including central adiposity in quantifying the cardiovascular risk was highlighted and a new anthropometric measure, the A Body Shape Index (ABSI) was developed which outperformed former standard measures of abdominal obesity in predicting mortality risk.
Substantial research on ABSI has been carried out both nationally and globally. In the current article, we provide an overview of the standard measures of abdominal obesity which have been employed for over the years. Extensive Medline, Web of Science and Pubmed search was adopted to congregate research pertaining to ABSI and was later penned down to compile this review. The authors have highlighted the role of BMI and its major limitations in the first part of this writing. Then the growing significance and advantages of ABSI in clinical context have been briefly described, followed by the discussion on the earlier and currently accepted opinions for ABSI based on the studies in the past and recent times. The prospective aspect of ABSI has also been delved into, with reference to findings or recommendations of exploration already done. The rationale behind this review was to provide a thorough quintessence of the research carried out in the field of surrogate markers of adiposity with an attempt to summarize the previous concepts as well as recent perspective about the value of ABSI. To enable a nippy glance for the readers, we have also tabulated a chronological account of researches on BMI and ABSI conducted across the globe over a period of 18 years! To sum up, we lay down prospective research directives related to ABSI as well as offer perspectives to stimulate further research inquiry into its potential usefulness as an anthropometric measure for a better and accurate assessment of cardiovascular risk. So the authors here have made an attempt to present a robust Review on ABSI and tried to thrust upon the contention that it is high time to replace BMI with ABSI.
Keywords: Body Shape Index, Body Mass Index, obesity, Waist Circumference
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