Metabolic Score for Visceral Fat (METS-VF) Estimation – A Novel Cost-Effective Obesity Indicator for Visceral Adipose Tissue Estimation

BACKGROUND: Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) assessment is limited in clinical practice due to expensive, time consuming and limited availability of MRI and DXA machines. We explored the utility of a recently developed Metabolic Score for Visceral Fat (METS-VF) to assess VAT in south Asian individuals with morbid obesity. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Individuals with BMI ≥35 kg/m(2) aged between 30 and 60 years were randomly selected from a database of individuals with morbid obesity, attending a multi-disciplinary bariatric clinic in a tertiary care teaching hospital in southern India. Body composition was assessed by using a Hologic Discovery A dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) machine. METS-VF was used to estimate VAT by using a previously published algorithm. RESULTS: The mean age and body mass index of the study subjects (N=350) were 38.2 years and 40.1 kg/m(2). The MET-VF score performed satisfactorily (AUC of 0.78 (95% CI 0.72–0.85)) for predicting an increased visceral adipose tissue (VAT area ≥ 163 cm(2)) as detected by DXA. A METS-VF value of 7.3 was found to have a good sensitivity and reasonable specificity in predicting elevated VAT in this population. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to validate the utility of METS-VF as a surrogate measure of visceral adiposity in south Indian individuals with morbid obesity. Given the simplicity, easy availability, reliability and inexpensive nature of this obesity indicator, it may find its widespread use in lower middle-income countries.