ANTHROPOMETRY AND BIOELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE ANALYSIS COMPARED TO DUAL-PHOTON ABSORPTIOMETRY FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF BODY COMPOSITION OF HIV-SEROPOSITIVE PATIENTS

Introduction: HIV-seropositive patients have shown changes in body composition such as lipoatrophy in certain regions of the body and lipohypertrophy in others, representing characteristics of lipodystrophy syndrome. It is important to monitor the quantity of fat per body segment using practical and low-cost methods in order to optimize the treatment of this group. Objectives: To correlate the body composition per body segment obtained by anthropometric measurements and by segmental bioelectrical impedance with DXA in HIV-seropositive patients on antiretroviral treatment Methods: We measured circumferences (arm, waist, hip, thigh and calf) and skinfolds (biceps, triceps, subscapular, suprailiac) and performed segmental bioelectrical impedance (BIA) analysis and DXA. The Pearson test was used to determine correlations and the St. Laurent test was used to assess concordance between variables. Results: We evaluated 26 patients, 35% of whom were overweight. The triceps skinfold (TSF), waist circumference (WC) and thigh circumference (TC) were significantly correlated with the measurement obtained by the gold standard (p<0.01). There was no concordance between the values obtained by segmental BIA and by DXA. Conclusions: Anthropometric measurements such as TSF, WC and TC are important for the monitoring of changes in body composition among HIV-seropositive patients on antiretroviral treatment. Segmental BIA did not prove to be appropriate for the assessment of body composition in HIV-seropositive patients.