Obesity prevalence and accuracy of BMI-defined obesity in Russian firefighters

<span class="paragraphSection"><div class="boxTitle">Abstract</div><div class="boxTitle">Background</div>No data exist on obesity or the accuracy of body mass index (BMI) in Russian Federation firefighters.<div class="boxTitle">Aims</div>To determine the prevalence of obesity and rates of misclassification of BMI-based obesity status.<div class="boxTitle">Methods</div>Career firefighters in the Moscow region completed anthropometric assessments including height, weight, BMI, body fat per cent (BF%) and waist circumference (WC). Using these three methods, we defined obesity as BMI ≥30, BF% >25 and WC >102, respectively.<div class="boxTitle">Results</div>The study group consisted of 167 male firefighters. Obesity prevalence was 22% for BMI [95% confidence interval (CI) 16.9–28.5], 60% for BF% (95% CI 52.5–67.3) and 28% for WC (95% CI 21.3–34.9). False positive rates for BMI-based obesity status were low, with 3% (95% CI −1.1 to 7.1) and 6% (95% CI 1.6–9.9) of non-obese participants defined by BF% and WC standards misidentified as obese using BMI. However, 65% (95% CI 55.7–77.4) of BF%-defined obese participants and 36% (95% CI 22.5–49.9) of WC-defined obese participants were misclassified as non-obese using BMI (i.e. false negatives).<div class="boxTitle">Conclusions</div>Rates of BMI-based obesity in Russian male firefighters were similar to that of males in the general Russian adult male population. Compared with BF% or WC standards, BMI-based obesity classi- fication produced low rates of false positives but demonstrated high rates of false negatives.</span>

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