Comparison of Anthropometric Equations and Dual X-ray Absorptiometry to Determine Body Composition in Active Breast Cancer Survivors.
It is clear that ideal body weight and composition are related to all cause mortality, health, and longevity in healthy and non-healthy populations including breast cancer survivors. Additionally, there is a strong inverse relationship between survival rates related to levels of body fat as well as the development of comorbidities like osteoporosis in cancer survivors. Knowing the criterion measure of body composition that confers a protective advantage to survival and how to interpret the value based on the assessment tool has significant health ramifications. Errant determination of body composition may lead to a false assumption of risk and subsequent poor energy balance strategies.
Each method has benefits and limitations and range considerably in reliability, validity, and associated costs. A question of interest is, how do different body composition assessment methods compare for a rather select and active population of older female breast cancer survivors? Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare body density and percentage of fat measured using DXA versus estimated measures of percentage of fat estimated from skinfold thickness. It was hypothesized that body density measured by DXA would be significantly lower when compared to body density estimated from skinfold measures.
The reason may be that in this rather small group of active BCS, the demands of Dragon Boat racing and bilateral training (paddling both left and right sides) provided a sufficient stimulus to maintain bone mineral content on both sides of the upper body.
Sport Exerc Med Open J. 2021; 7(1): 1-5. doi: 10.17140/SEMOJ-7-182
