From Bioblast
Description
Body fat is conventionally expressed as BF%, which is the percentage of body fat mass relative to the total body mass. In the healthy reference population (HRP), there is no excess body fat, and the fraction of body fat in the HRP is expressed - by definition - relative to the reference body mass, M°, at any given height. Although M° is identical in females and males at any given height, the fraction of body fat is higher in females than males in the HRP.
Abbreviation: BF
Reference: BME
Contributed by Gnaiger E 2020-01-04 linked to a preprint in preparation on body mass excess, BME.
From BMI to BME
- The BMI is known to predict adiposity with limited accuracy, with poor correlations between BMI and percentage of body fat. Therefore, several attempts have been made to derive alternative anthropometric indexes. The body adiposity index (Bergman et al 2011), however, has been criticized as insufficiently accurate for clinical applications (Cerqueira et al 2018). Other attempts include a shift of BMI cutoffs for different ethnic groups, adjustment of parameters for ethnicity, sex and age in equations incorporating the BMI, or the BMI is replaced and height/waist circumference included in fitted algorithms (Gallagher et al 2000; Al-Gindan et al 2015; Woolcott, Bergman 2018). The body mass excess, BME, introduces a concept that does not consider whole-body fat percentage, BF%, as the relevant risk factor, but the excess body fat mass, mFE, is emphasized with respect to the healthy reference body mass and composition, empirically based on the allometry of the healthy reference population, HRP.
From BF% to excess body fat mass fraction
- The BME is the total body mass, M [kg], normalized for the reference body mass, M° [kg], BME = M/M°. M° is calculated at a given height, H [m], from the allometric height-body mass relationship of the healthy reference population, HRP.
- BF% expresses body fat mass, mF [kg], as a percentage of total body mass (Gallagher et al 2000; Deurenberg et al 2001; Romero-Corral et al 2008; Bosy-Westphal et al 2009),
BF% = 100*mF/M (Eq. 1)
- mF increases due to accumulation of fat mass. Note that at any given height BF% or mF/M increases non-linearly with attenuated slope as a function of mF (Fig. 1a). In contrast, normalization for M° - the reference body mass without excess fat mass - yields linear and proportional functions at constant height, since M° is a constant at any height (Fig. 1b).
- Figure 1: Model calculation on body fat mass, mF, normalized for (a) total body mass, M, and (b) reference body mass, M°. The relationship for women and men is shown at constant height of 1.63 m and 1.76 m, with M° = of 51.2 and 63.8 kg. From BME= 1.0 to 1.7, M increases 1.7-fold to 87.2 and 108.8 kg in women and men, respectively. The reference body fat mass fraction is estimated at 0.27 and 0.15 for women and men (horizontal full arrows), increasing to mF/M = 0.39 and 0.32, respectively (a: vertical dotted arrows). This covers the range of BME from 1.0 to 1.7 equally in women and men. Due to the 'weight-lifting effect', there is an excess lean mass, mLE, which is assumed to be 0.8 times the excess fat mass, mFE. At the same BME, the net increase of mF/M° (body fat excess) is 0.39, identical in women and men (b: vertical dotted arrows).
Impact of experimental design
Body fat in the healthy reference population
- Lean body mass, ML [kg], is the fat-free body mass, and is thus defined as ML ≝ M-mF,
M ≝ ML + mF (Eq. 2)
- In turn, M is the sum of the reference mass at a given height and excess body mass, ME ≝ M-M°,
M ≝ M° + ME (Eq. 3)
- Excess body mass, ME, is due to accumulation of an excess fat mass, mFE, accompanied by a gain of excess lean mass, mLE, which includes increased bone mineral density, added bone mass and muscle mass due to the mechanical 'weight-lifting effect' (Iwaniec 2016 J Endocrinol). Thus Eq. 2 and 3 combined yield the definition for excess body mass,
ME ≝ mFE + mLE (Eq. 4)
- Inserting Eq. 4 into Eq. 3,
M = M° + mFE + mLE (Eq. 5)
- The fat mass, mF, is defined as the sum of the reference fat mass and excess fat mass, mF ≝ m°F+mFE, hence
mFE ≝ mF - m°F (Eq. 6)
- Inserting Eq. 6 into Eq. 5 yields body mass as the sum of the reference mass minus reference fat mass (which is the reference lean mass, M°L = M-m°F), plus the total body fat mass and the excess lean mass,
M = M° - m°F + mF + mLE (Eq. 7)
- Normalization for M° yields,
BME = M/M° = 1 + mF/M° - m°F/M° + mLE/M° (Eq. 8)
- which is related to the body mass excess, BME=M/M°.
- Figure 2: Body fat mass, mF, normalized for reference body mass, M°, as a function of body mass excess, BME. Assuming a linear relationship of f(BME-1) (dashed lines), R2 is 0.969 and 0.985 for women and men, respectively. A logarithmic model (full lines) improves the fit slightly for both women and men (R2 = 0.979 and 0.988, respectively). The intercept at BME=1 is the relative body fat mass of the healthy reference population. For the two models, this is 0.24 to 0.27 for women and 0.13 to 0.15 for men. The linear slopes are not significantly different in women and men, at 0.59 and 0.54, respectively. The linear model, therefore, implies that an average fraction of 0.44 of the excess body mass is due to a gain of lean body mass, and a fraction of 0.66 is due to a gain of fat mass. Data were calculated from tabulated values in the original references, including European white populations, African Americans, Japanese and Asien Indian populations as indicated. The purported differences between Asian and non-Asien populations is based on BMI, ignoring the effect of height on BMI. In contrast, BME provides a unifying concept for ethnic groups of different evolutionary backgroud, with differences in body height as a key to normalize for appropriate reference body mass, M°. Althoug M° at any given height is identical in women and men, a well defined difference exists in the reference body fat fraction between women and men, independent of height and evolutionary background of the populations covered in the original publications.
- The excess lean mass normalized for M° is a function of BME (or BME-1),
mLE/M° = f(BME-1) (Eq. 9)
- Inserting Eq. 8 and 9 into Eq. 7.2 yields
BME = 1 + mF/M° - m°F/M° + f(BME-1) (Eq. 10)
- Solving for the measured variable mF normalized for M°,
mF/M° = (BME-1) - f(BME-1) + m°F/M° (Eq. 11)
- which finally shows the equation derived to plot the normalized body fat mass as a function of BME (or BME-1),
mF/M° = (1-f)·(BME-1) + m°F/M° (Eq. 12)
- In this plot (Fig. 1), the slope equals (1-f), and the intercept is the fat mass normalized for the reference mass at a given height in the HRP.
MitoPedia: BME
References
- Al-Gindan YY, Hankey CR, Govan L, Gallagher D, Heymsfield SB, Lean ME (2015) Derivation and validation of simple anthropometric equations to predict adipose tissue mass and total fat mass with MRI as the reference method. Br J Nutr 114:1852-67. - »Bioblast link«
- Bergman RN, Stefanovski D, Buchanan TA, Sumner AE, Reynolds JC, Sebring NG, Xiang AH, Watanabe RM (2011) A better index of body adiposity. Obesity (Silver Spring) 19:1083-9. - »Bioblast link«
- Bosy-Westphal A, Plachta-Danielzik S, Dörhöfer RP, Müller MJ (2009) Short stature and obesity: positive association in adults but inverse association in children and adolescents. Br J Nutr 102:453-61. - »Bioblast link«
- Cerqueira MS, Santos CAD, Silva DAS, Amorim PRDS, Marins JCB, Franceschini SDCC (2018) Validity of the body adiposity index in predicting body fat in adults: a systematic review. Adv Nutr 9:617-24. - »Bioblast link«
- Deurenberg P, Andreoli A, Borg P, Kukkonen-Harjula K, de Lorenzo A, van Marken Lichtenbelt WD, Testolin G, Vigano R, Vollaard N (2001) The validity of predicted body fat percentage from body mass index and from impedance in samples of five European populations. Eur J Clin Nutr 55:973-9. - »Bioblast link«
- Gallagher D, Heymsfield SB, Heo M, Jebb SA, Murgatroyd PR, Sakamoto Y (2000) Healthy percentage body fat ranges: an approach for developing guidelines based on body mass index. Am J Clin Nutr 72:694-701. - »Bioblast link«
- Iwaniec UT, Turner RT (2016) Influence of body weight on bone mass, architecture and turnover. J Endocrinol 230: R115-30. - »Bioblast link«
- Misra P, Singh AK, Archana S, Lohiya A, Kant S (2019) Relationship between body mass index and percentage of body fat, estimated by bio-electrical impedance among adult females in a rural community of North India: A cross-sectional study. J Postgrad Med 65:134-40. - »Bioblast link«
- Romero-Corral A, Somers VK, Sierra-Johnson J, Thomas RJ, Collazo-Clavell ML, Korinek J, Allison TG, Batsis JA, Sert-Kuniyoshi FH, Lopez-Jimenez F (2008) Accuracy of body mass index in diagnosing obesity in the adult general population. Int J Obes (Lond) 32:959-66. - »Bioblast link«
- Woolcott OO, Bergman RN (2018) Relative fat mass (RFM) as a new estimator of whole-body fat percentage ─ A cross-sectional study in American adult individuals. Sci Rep 8:10980. - »Bioblast link«
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