Abdominal diameter index is a stronger predictor of prevalent Barrett's esophagus than BMI or waist-to-hip ratio

Abdominal obesity is associated with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and Barrett's esophagus (BE). Increased body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) have been associated with BE. Abdominal diameter index (ADI, sagittal abdominal diameter divided by thigh circumference) was previously shown to be a more accurate predictor of incident cardiovascular disease compared to other measurements. Our aim is to examine whether abdominal diameter index was a more accurate predictor of prevalent BE compared to other anthropometric measurements. We conducted a case-control study of patients presenting to our institution. Our study population was consecutive Caucasian men with a known history of BE, and we recruited control patients who had GERD without BE. Both groups completed a questionnaire about demographics, smoking, and medications and underwent a series of anthropometric body measurements using standardized measuring tools. BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, and abdominal diameter index were calculated. Thirty-one BE patients and 27 control patients were recruited. The BE cohort were older and had a higher rate of hiatal hernia. The mean abdominal diameter index for patients with BE was 0.65 ± 0.07 and without BE was 0.60 ± 0.07 (p = 0.01). The predictive value of abdominal diameter index was analyzed using a receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve and was a more powerful predictor of BE than waist-to-hip ratio or BMI (AUROC = 0.70 vs. 0.60 vs. 0.52, respectively). Using a cut-point abdominal diameter index value of 0.60, abdominal diameter index had a sensitivity of 77.4% and a specificity of 63.0% for the presence of BE. When controlling for age, smoking status, and BMI, an abdominal diameter index ≥0.60 was a significant independent risk factor for BE (OR = 5.7, 95% CI = 1.29-25.4). In this pilot study, the abdominal diameter index appears to be a more powerful predictor of the presence of BE than BMI and waist-to-hip ratio and remained the only significant predictor of BE in multivariate analysis. We propose further validation of abdominal diameter index before inclusion in future prediction tools for BE.