Relative Fat Mass (RFM) as a new tool of estimating body fat: a systematic review

Abstract

A high rate of body adiposity is closely associated with increased mortality, which has been linked to chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), characterizing a public health problem. The current method for assessing nutritional status have their limitations, such as BMI, which does not differentiable between lean mass and fat mass, and estimation by BIA method, which has a high cost and is not viable for population studies. Thus, the objective of this work was to identify the effectiveness of the new RFM index through a systematic review based on the PRISMA method, where this has the main purpose of helping authors to improve their systematic reviews. The index uses only two anthropometric data, being height and waist circumference, thus estimating the %TBF. Such review was carried out from 4 databases (PubMed, Capes journals portal, Scielo and Science Direct), in addiction to searching gray literature (Google), where 110 articles were found, being 82 from PubMed, 26 from Capes journals portal and 2 from gray literature. After applying the eligibility criteria, 8 articles were included in the review. Such studies demonstrated a high effectiveness of the RFM to estimate the percentage of total body fat in both sexes in the populations tested, thus providing a more accurate nutritional classification compared to the traditional BMI. If tested in different populations around the world, it can be considered a standard and global method for estimating the percentage of body fat.