Abstract

The waist-hip ratio, namely waist circumference (WC) divided by hip circumference (HC), has been referred to in thousands of articles, generally as a correlate and predictor either of health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, or of amounts of visceral and subcutaneous abdominal fat. It has been argued that combining WC and HC as a ratio is inappropriate, and yet their individual roles can only be fully elucidated if considered jointly. Whereas WC is positively associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and premature mortality, the opposite is true of HC. With health-related measures taken as dependent variables, the present novel approach establishes that WC and HC are far better treated as separate independent variables in multiple regression equations than as their ratio. This necessarily produces closer fits to data. One should then allow for variations in height, or some other such measure of general body size, by including this in the regression equations. The widespread concern with the ratio seems to have distracted attention from HC, for this is discussed notably less often than WC. Given that other body parts, such as the thighs, may share relevant properties with the hips, measurements of these could perhaps replace HC.

摘要

腰臀比，即腰围（WC）除以臀围（HC），已在数千篇文章中提及，通常是与健康状况（例如心血管疾病和糖尿病）或内脏和皮下腹部脂肪。有人认为，将WC和HC作为比例混合使用是不合适的，但是只有共同考虑才能充分阐明其各自的作用。WC与心血管疾病，糖尿病和过早死亡呈正相关，而HC与之相反。通过将与健康相关的度量作为因变量，本新颖方法确定，在多元回归方程中，将WC和HC作为单独的独立变量要好于将其作为比率。这必然使数据更接近拟合。然后，应通过将其包括在回归方程中，来考虑身高的变化，或某种其他这样的总体体型测量方法。对该比例的广泛关注似乎已经分散了对HC的关注，因为与WC相比，讨论的频率明显较低。考虑到其他身体部位（例如大腿）可能与臀部具有相关的属性，因此对这些部位的测量结果可能会替代HC。