Research
Hormonal
Leptin levels can be used to adjust BMI estimates to better predict percent body fat, particularly in women with high leptin levels (>30 ng/mL).
If you are a woman with high body fat but a 'normal' BMI, ask your doctor about checking your leptin level. It might help explain your health risks. A high leptin level suggests your body is resisting the hormone that controls hunger, which is common in obesity.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Clinicians can use leptin-revised levels to enhance the accuracy of BMI estimates of percentage body fat when DXA is unavailable.
Why this rating
Strong correlation found between leptin and body fat; regression models show improved accuracy with leptin adjustment.
Source
Measuring Adiposity in Patients: The Utility of Body Mass Index (BMI), Percent Body Fat, and Leptin
Nirav R. Shah et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0033308
cross_sectional · n=1393Cited 552×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Standard BMI cutoffs (≥30 kg/m²) significantly underestimate obesity prevalence, particularly in women, due to failure to account for sarcopenic obesity and body composition changes with age.Good
- Revised BMI cutoffs of 24 for women and 28 for men better predict obesity (defined by DXA percent body fat) than the standard cutoff of 30.Good
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