Concordance between Laboratory and Field Methods for the Assessment of Body Fat in Olympic Combat Athletes: Analysis of the Influence of Adiposity

María Fernandez-del-Valle, Hugo Olmedillas, Nieves Palacios Gil de Antuñano, Ana María Ribas, Pablo Martínez-Camblor, Ángela García-Gonzalez, Natalia Úbeda and Eduardo Iglesias-Gutiérrez
Additional contact information
María Fernandez-del-Valle: Department of Functional Biology, University of Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo, Spain
Hugo Olmedillas: Department of Functional Biology, University of Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo, Spain
Nieves Palacios Gil de Antuñano: Sports Medicine Center, Higher Council for Sports, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Ana María Ribas: Sports Medicine Center, Higher Council for Sports, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Pablo Martínez-Camblor: Department of Biomedical Data Science, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, NH 03756, USA
Ángela García-Gonzalez: Department of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences, CEU San Pablo University, 28668 Boadilla del Monte, Spain
Natalia Úbeda: Department of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences, CEU San Pablo University, 28668 Boadilla del Monte, Spain
Eduardo Iglesias-Gutiérrez: Department of Functional Biology, University of Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: Combat sports athletes competing in the same discipline exhibit notable and substantial differences in body weight, body composition (BC) and adiposity. No studies have considered the influence of adiposity levels in the agreement between different BC assessment methods. The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of adiposity in the agreement between different methods used to estimate relative body fat (%BF) in Olympic combat sport athletes. A total of 38 male athletes were evaluated using air displacement plethysmography and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as laboratory methods, and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), near-infrared interactance (NIR) and anthropometry as field methods. All methods were compared to DXA. Agreement analyses were performed by means of individual intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for each method compared to DXA, Bland–Altman plots and paired Student t -tests. The ICCs for the different methods compared to DXA were analyzed, considering tertiles of %BF, tertiles of body weight and type of sport. For the whole group, individual ICCs oscillated between 0.806 for BIA and 0.942 for anthropometry. BIA showed a statistically significant underestimation of %BF when compared to DXA. The agreement between every method and DXA was not affected by %BF, but it was highest in athletes at the highest %BF tertile (>13%). The ICC between NIR and DXA was poor in 72–82 kg athletes. Our results indicate that field methods are useful for routine %BF analysis, and that anthropometry is particularly appropriate, as it showed the highest accuracy irrespective of the athletes’ adiposity.

Keywords: adiposity; body composition; elite athletes; methods agreement; Olympic combat sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4493/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4493/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:8:p:4493-:d:789489

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().