Several scientific evidence suggests that Asian populations have different associations between BMI, percentage of body fat, and health risks than do European populations. However, available data do not necessarily indicate a clear BMI cut-off point for all Asians for overweight or obesity. The cut-off point for observed risk of cardiovascular diseases varies from 22 kg/m2 to 25 kg/m2 in different Asian populations; for high risk it varies from 26 kg/m2 to 31 kg/m2.[1,2]
The Asia Pacific criteria were devised with statistics obtained from Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean countries. Because of lack of adequate data from majority of Asia, much of the recommendations had been obtained from study of the multiethnic population of Mauritius, which included Indians, Chinese, and Creoles among others. It was also noted that the Creoles and Indians had higher rates of obesity than the Chinese.[3]
A WHO expert consultation on the debate regarding the interpretation of obesity cutoffs in Asian population also concluded that the available data do not indicate a clear cutoff for obesity or overweight.[4]
Therefore, in this background of confusion regarding appropriate obesity criteria for a multi-ethnicity population like India, we chose to use the universally accepted WHO criteria for our final tabulation. We, however, did initially consider implementing the Asia Pacific criteria for our set of patients, and while doing so, the obesity and overweight proportion increased to 60% compared to the 24% by the WHO criteria, keeping it still below the global figures of obesity in IIH.
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Conflicts of interest
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REFERENCES
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