Anthropometric indices as surrogates for estimating abdominal visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue: A meta-analysis with 16129 participants

To seek anthropometric indices that estimate visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue (VAT and SAT) by meta-analysis and comparing the predictive efficacy based on different characteristics of participants. PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Wanfang databases were searched for publications containing correlation coefficients of VAT and/or SAT with waist circumference (WC) and/or body mass index (BMI). The overall or subgroup pooled results were analyzed by meta and metafor packages of R with random effects model. MedCalc software was used to compare the correlation coefficients between groups. Twenty-nine publications were included in this meta-analysis. The correlation coefficients of VAT-WC, VAT-BMI, SAT-WC and SAT-BMI for total studies were between 0.640 and 0.785. The correlation of VAT with WC was larger than that with BMI (Z=11.664, P