Body fat more useful than BMI for assessing diabetes risk
It's prompted calls to change guidelines
22nd May 2018
Body fat percentage is more useful than BMI for assessing a patient’s risk of diabetes or pre-diabetes, US research suggests.
The study of 6300 patients not diagnosed with diabetes found that, of those with a high percentage of body fat but normal BMI, 13.5% had HbA1c readings 5.7% (39mmol/mol) or above.
In contrast, only 10.5% of overweight patients with a low body fat percentage had readings as high.
The cut-offs for high body fat percentages were 25% for men and 35% for women, measured via whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.