Waist circumference and waist-hip ratio as predictors of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the Nepalese population of Kavre District.

The objective of the present study was to find out WHR and WC as predictor of Type 2 DM in the population of Kavre district of Nepal. Sixty-five "known type 2 diabetic" and Thirty-five "self-reported non-diabetic" subjects above thirty years of age were included in the present study. Height, Weight, Waist Circumference and Hip Circumference were recorded for every subject. BMI and WHR were calculated by the standard formula. The data was analyzed using SPSS Evaluation Version 15.0 and STATA Special Edition Version 8.2. Our results showed that the optimal cut-off values for WHR, WC. BMI and age in female are 0.87, 0.85 cms, 21.40 kg/m2 and 40 years respectively and for male the respective values are 0.96, 0.87 cms, 23.63 kg/m2 and 44 years. In female, age (82.9%) is the strongest predictor followed by WHR (78.1%), WC (70.2%) and least for BMI (55.0%) whereas for male WC (87.0%) is the strongest followed by WHR (81.6%), BMI (68.5%) and least: for age (6.4.6%) using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. Optimum sensitivity and specificity obtained from the ROC curves corresponded to these cutoff values and area under curve for their predictive ability. The current study showed that the WC and WHR are the best predictors of type 2 DM in both male and female population of Kavre district.