Comparison of air-displacement plethysmography with hydrostatic weighing and bioelectrical impedance analysis for the assessment of body composition in healthy adults

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Abstract
Background: Over the past decade, considerable attention has been paid to accurately measuring body composition in diverse populations. Recently, the use of air-displacement plethysmography (AP) was proposed as an accurate, comfortable, and accessible method of body-composition analysis. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare measurements of percentage body fat (%BF) by AP and 2 other established techniques, hydrostatic weighing (HW) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), in adults. Design: The sample consisted of healthy men (n = 23) and women (n = 24). %BF was measured by AP, HW, and BIA. Results: In the total group, %BFAP (25.0 ± 8.9%) was not significantly different from %BFHW (25.1 ± 7.7%) or %BFBIA (23.9 ± 7.7%), and %BFAP was significantly correlated with %BFHW (r = 0.944, P < 0.001) and with %BFBIA (r = 0.859, P < 0.01). Compared with HW, AP underestimated %BF in men (by −1.24 ± 3.12%) but overestimated %BF in women (by 1.02 ± 2.48%), indicating a significant sex effect (P < 0.05). The differences in estimation between AP and BIA and between BIA and HW were not significantly different between the sexes. Conclusion: AP is an accurate method for assessing body composition in healthy adults. Future studies should assess further the cause of the individual variations with this new method.