Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The predictive value of body simplified indices needs to be evaluated properly for cardiovascular risk. This study aimed to assess and compare the relative relationship of arm circumference (AC), arm muscle circumfer-ence (AMC), body mass index (BMI), and waist-hip ratio (WHR) with Ultra-Sensitive C-Reactive Pro-tein (US-CRP) in healthy male subjects and with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).PATIENTS AND METHODS: We performed the study at the department of Physiology, Col-lege of Medicine & King Khalid University Hospi-tal, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was a cross-sectional study with 93 healthy male subjects and 112 type 2 diabetic male pa-tients who underwent body composition anal-ysis by BIA and fasting venous blood samples were collected. US-CRP and body composition were determined for all subjects.RESULTS: US-CRP is correlated positively with AC (0.378) and BMI (0.394) more than AMC (0.282) and WHR (0.253) which have lower correlation both in control and DM group. BCM has the low-est correlation with US-CRP (0.105). The associ-ation between US-CRP and AC, AMC, Body Fat Percent (BFP), and body fat mass (BFM) are sta-tistically significant except for BFP in DM group. In control group, AC is noticed to be a better pre-dictor for US-CRP, with area under curve (AUC) 64.2% (p=0.019), WHR with AUC 72.6% (p<0.001), and BMI with AUC 65.4% (p=0.011) but AMC is not a good predictor in control group with AUC 57.5% (p=0.213). In DM group, AC is noticed to be a better predictor for US-CRP, with AUC 71.5% (p<0.001), WHR with AUC 67.4% (p=0.004), BMI with AUC 70.9% (p=0.001), and AMC with AUC 65.2% (p=0.011).CONCLUSIONS: Simplified muscle mass body indices like AC and AMC have signifi-cant predictive value for assessing cardiovascu-lar risk in both healthy population and patients with T2DM. Therefore, AC could be used as a future predictor for cardiovascular disease in healthy and DM patients. Further investigations are needed to confirm its applicability.