'Healthy' waist may be a bit bigger for black women
Last Updated: 2011-01-25 17:41:16 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The definition of a 'healthy' waistline may have a bit more wiggle room for African-American women than for white women, a new study suggests.
According to Dr. Peter T. Katzmarzyk and colleagues from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the optimal waist circumference threshold for white women is 91.9cm (about 36 inches), and for African American women 96.8cm (38 inches).
As it stands, men are considered to have abdominal obesity when their waistline tops 40 inches (101.6 centimeters); for women, the threshold is 35 inches (88.9 centimeters).
For the study, reported online January 6 in Obesity, researchers tried to estimate the BMI and waist size that best separated people at relatively high risk for diabetes and heart disease from those at lower risk.
High risk in this case meant having two or more risk factors for those diseases -- such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or elevated blood sugar.
For white women and men of both races, a BMI of about 30 was the threshold -- the same as the standard value. But among black women, it was 33. The same pattern was seen when it came to waist size.
Still, more research is needed to show that, according to lead researcher Dr. Peter T. Katzmarzyk.
"We do not want to make too many practical implications at this point," Dr. Katzmarzyk told Reuters Health in an email.
He also stressed that the findings don't mean that African-American women with a BMI below 33 or a waistline under 38 inches have "no risk" of obesity-related health problems.
"What the study does show is that there is a strong relationship between obesity and risk factors in white and African-American men and women," Dr. Katzmarzyk said. "This relationship is robust in all groups, so no one is immune from the effects of obesity."
The findings are based on 6,476 adult volunteers who had their weight, blood pressure and other health factors measured as part of a larger study of obesity, lifestyle and chronic disease risks. Just over 2,400 participants were African American.
It's not clear why there was a racial difference among women but not men, according to Dr. Katzmarzyk.
One possibility, he said, is that white and black women have differences in the specific areas of the body that fat tends to accumulate -- and men may not have those differences.
SOURCE:http://bit.ly/e0vmeyObesity, online January 6, 2011.
© 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
