Objective: Central obesity has been shown to negatively influence the quality of life in centrally obese persons of both sexes. In a population of 740 centrally obese Asian-Indian adults, the present study was conducted to determine whether body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, hip circumference (HC), waist-hip ratio (WHR) and sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD) could predict different domains of quality of life. The differences based on gender and age were also determined. Linear regression analyses were carried out and the level of statistical significance (α) was set at 0.05.
Results: Body mass index, HC, WHR and SAD were significant predictors for different domains of quality of life as well as for the summated total quality of life. BMI was found to be the most important predictor among all predictors across age groups and both sexes.
Keywords: Anthropometry; Central obesity; Indian adults; Quality of life.