Discriminatory power of nutritional indicators on detection of increased glucose

OBJECTIVE: To compare the discriminatory power of anthropometric indices and body composition in the detection of increased fasting glucose in elderly women. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted with 144 elderly women of a group of seniors from a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Measures evaluated were body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), percentage body fat (%BF) by bipolar and tetrapolar bioimpedance, and fasting blood glucose. The receiver operating curve (ROC) was constructed to analyze the discriminatory indexes power, and the area under the curve was used to define which cutoff points that best discriminated the increased glucose. RESULTS: The areas under the ROC was 0.655 to BMI (p=0.015), 0.669 (p=0.008) to WC and 0.646 (p=0.022) for tetrapolar bioimpedance, with no statistical difference between the observed areas. CONCLUSION: The anthropometric and body composition indexes showed discrimination power of increased glucose levels, with the exception of the bipolar bioimpedance analysis.