Correlations between Anthropometric Indices and Hypertension in Adults: Emerging Trends in a Contemporary Urban Setting

Anthropometric indices are influenced by nutrition, genetics, lifestyle, age, and ethnicity thus assessing these indices is a cheap tool to predict risk factors that affect blood pressure. There is no consensus on the anthropometric index that best predicts adults’ blood pressure. This research aimed to determine the relationships between anthropometric indices (weight, height, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HP), neck circumference (NC), chest circumference (CC), subscapular fold (SSF), triceps fold (TF), body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR), waist-height ratio (WHtR), subscapular-triceps ratio (STR), and blood pressure; and to determine the best predictor(s) of hypertension among these indices. This cross-sectional study was carried out in Enugu City, South-East Nigeria, and involved 355 adults, aged between 20-75 years. The comparison of the indices was done using the Student’s t-test. Pearson correlation coefficient (r) was used to relate the indices with blood pressure, and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) was used to determine the cut-off points of the indices to identify the best predictor(s) of hypertension. The prevalence of hypertension was 38.0%. All the anthropometric indices except height, NC, and STR were significantly higher in hypertensive participants than in the non-hypertensive participants. Pearson correlation coefficient (r) showed that all the indices except height, NC, and STR have weak linear positive relationships with blood pressure (r=0.1127-0.375) at p<0.001. The ROCs showed that WC was the best predictor with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.692, a cut-off point of 96.50cm, and a PPV of 57%. However, with an AUC <0.7, all the indices were weak predictors of hypertension. Hypertension correlated positively with increased age. Although anthropometric indices are weak predictors of hypertension, WC is the best index in predicting hypertension. Due to the inconsistent effects of WC on sensitivity, specificity, and PPV, WC is still a weak predictor of hypertension. However, the predictive power of WC could be augmented by age if the participants were above 45 years. At age >45 years, the participants had 5 times the chance of developing hypertension regardless of gender.