Are anthropometric measures related to fatty acid concentrations?
International Journal of Development Research
Are anthropometric measures related to fatty acid concentrations?
Received 28th June 2020; Received in revised form 19th July 2020; Accepted 20th August 2020; Published online 23rd September 2020
Copyright © 2020, Éboni Marília Reuter et al., This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Objective: To associate the levels of fatty acids in serum with anthropometric markers. Methods: A total of 48 subjects were evaluated by quantifying their relative percentages of serum free and esterified fatty acids (EFAs) by gas chromatography. Measures including body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BF%), waist circumference (WC) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) were used to characterize anthropometric measurements. We compared the relative percentages of the concentrations of EFAs and FFAs to categories of anthropometric indicators and used the correlation coefficients to evaluate their associations. Results: Differences were identified in palmitic and palmitoleic acid concentrations for BMI, WC and WHR; myristic and linoleic acid concentrations for WC and WHR; oleic acid concentrations for WC; stearic acid concentrations for WHR; and palmitoleic acid concentrations for BF%. A moderate and positive association was found between BMI and palmitoleic acid (r = 0.471; r = 0.477), and a moderate and negative association was found between WHR and linoleic acid (r = -0.448). Conclusion: The composition of fatty acids was found to be related to anthropometric values, as evidenced by differences in concentrations and measures of association.