Association between waist-to-height ratio and chronic kidney disease in the Taiwanese population

Obesity, metabolic syndrome (MS) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are all becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. Body mass index (BMI) has traditionally been employed to identify overweight or obese individuals, yet multiple studies have yielded conflicting results when BMI was used to evaluate the association between obesity and CKD.

The purpose of this large, population-based, multicentre study was to evaluate the associations of BMI and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) with CKD.

A retrospective study of 41,600 subjects who had physical examinations from January 2010 to December 2011 was performed. Data such as life style and habits were collected by interviews, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), height, body weight, waist circumference, total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoproteins (HDL), triglycerides (TG), fasting blood glucose and creatinine levels were measured. The association of these factors with CKD was analysed by use of SPSS 15.0 software.

The key findings of this study were that WHtR but not BMI was an independent predictor of CKD. Additionally, SBP was a predictor of CKD in males and females, and TG and TC were independent predictors of CKD in females. Such measures are components of MS, which may also be associated with the development of CKD.

WHtR appears to be a better measure of central obesity than BMI, and is an easy-to-use, noninvasive tool for identifying individuals at risk of developing obesity-related CKD, and potentially also MS-related CKD.