American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 147, No. 2: 167-172
Copyright © 1998 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
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Does Body Mass Index Adequately Capture the Relation of Body Composition and Body Size to Health Outcomes?
1 Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston, MA
2 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health Boston, MA
3 Department of Epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health Los Angeles, CA
4 Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health Boston, MA
Body mass index (BMI) has become the most commonly used index of body composition in epidemiologic research. It has displaced weight, height, and other measures of body composition. In this paper, the authors show that use of BMI alone does not always capture adequately the joint relation of body composition and body size to health outcomes, and that such use often represents implausible restrictions on the relation. Use of body mass index and height or weight and height will often be needed to describe this relation and to control confounding by these variables. Am J Epidemiol 1998;147:167–72
anthropometry; body mass index; ponderal index
Reprint requests to Dr. Karin Michels, Channing Laboratory, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115.
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