Could body roundness index replace BMI?

Could a new health metric better measure body fat and diagnose obesity in adults?

For decades, body mass index, or BMI, has been a widely used medical screening tool. But experts from the American Medical Association have pointed out some of the metric’s shortcomings. Now a recent paper published in JAMA Network Open reported that the body roundness index, or BRI, shows promise as a better predictor of mortality in adults.

Two University of Cincinnati College of Medicine doctors — Malti Vij, MD, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Inuk Zandvakili, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Digestive Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine — recently appeared on Cincinnati Edition on 91.7 WVXU News to discuss the advantages and limitations of both. 

As for a criticism of BMI, Vij said, "It does not differentiate between weight due to fat mass and weight due to muscle mass... it doesn't talk about fat distribution."

Zandvakili explained how the body roundness index can offer a more complete picture of a person's health.

"The body roundness index, it takes a measure of height and also the weight circumference to try and better estimate the amount of fat in the body, and particularly the fat that is around the waist and abdomen, which we know correlates more closely with these bad health outcomes," said Zandvakili, who is a gastroenterologist and gastrointestinal hormone researcher.

Click here to listen to the full discussion on WVXU.

Featured image at top: Diet journal with pen and tape measure. Photo/provided.