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Five year changes in waist circumference, body mass index and obesity in Augsburg, Germany
A D Liese1, A Döring, H W Hense
1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Norman J. Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia 29208, USA. ALIESE@sph.sc.edu
Aims:
To assess temporal changes in body fat distribution, body mass index and obesity in Augsburg, Germany.
Methods:
Waist circumference, weight and height were measured in two independent samples of 4804 and 4792, men and women, aged 25-74 years, in the MONICA Augsburg surveys 1989/90 and 1994/95. Abdominal obesity was defined as waist circumference greater than the 80th gender-specific percentile (men: 103, women: 92 cm) in the 1989/90 population. Obesity was defined as a body mass index (BMI) > or = 30 kg/m2.
Results:
Age-standardized mean waist circumference increased by more than 1 cm (p-value < 0.00003) in both men and women while BMI increased by 0.3-0.4 kg/m2 (p-value < 0.01). We observed both a shift to higher values in the waist circumference distribution plus--particularly in women older than 45 years --a substantial right shift in the top of the distribution. Moreover, survey participants in 1994/95 who were at the higher end of the BMI distributions were disproportionately more obese than their respective peers in 1989/90. The prevalence of abdominal obesity rose by 3.3% in men and 3.6% in women, while the prevalence of obesity rose by 2% from 17% in men and by 2.5% from 19% in women.
Conclusions:
While changes in the Augsburg population may not be as alarming as in other countries, the secular increase in waist circumferences in both men and women occurring over a short time period indicates a need for prevention given the already high absolute weight, BMI and waist circumference levels in the population.