Associations between metabolic risk factors and body mass index, waist circumference, waist‐to‐height ratio and waist‐to‐hip ratio in a Chinese rural population

AIMS/INTRODUCTION: Obesity plays a central role in metabolic syndrome. Obesity indexes are important in clinical work. In the present study, we sought to determine the relationships between obesity indexes and metabolic risk factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied 11,568 participants over 35 years. Body mass index, waist circumference (WC), waist‐to‐height ratio (WHtR) and waist‐to‐hip ratio were measured and calculated. To compare the predictive ability of the obesity indexes in diagnosing multiple metabolic risk factors, the areas under receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated, and cut‐off values were determined. A partial correlation coefficient was used to assess the intercorrelations between the obesity indexes, and to evaluate the correlations between each index and each metabolic risk factor. RESULTS: The partial correlation coefficient for WHtR and WC was 0.947. In diagnosing multiple metabolic risk factors, the WHtR areas under receiver operating characteristic curves was greater than that for the other obesity indexes in both sexes. The cut‐off point for the WHtR was 0.50 in men and 0.52 in women. The cut‐off point for WC was 85 cm in men and 80 cm in women. CONCLUSIONS: WHtR strongly correlates with WC. The WHtR might show the same predictive ability as the WC in diagnosing multiple metabolic risk factors.