Diagnostic Performance of the Measurement of Skinfold Thickness for Abdominal and Overall Obesity in the Peruvian Population: A 5-Year Cohort Analysis

The escalating prevalence of overall and abdominal obesity, particularly affecting Latin America, underscores the urgent need for accessible and cost-effective predictive methods to address the growing disease burden. This study assessed skinfold thicknesses’ predictive capacity for overall and abdominal obesity in Peruvian adults aged 30 or older over 5 years. Data from the PERU MIGRANT 5-year cohort study were analyzed, defining obesity using BMI and waist circumference. Receiver operating characteristic curves and area under the curve (AUC) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Adults aged ≥ 30 ( n = 988) completed the study at baseline, with 47% male. A total of 682 participants were included for overall and abdominal obesity analysis. The 5-year prevalence values for overall and abdominal obesity were 26.7% and 26.6%, respectively. Subscapular skinfold (SS) best predicted overall obesity in men (AUC = 0.81, 95% CI: 0.75–0.88) and women (AUC = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67–0.88). Regarding abdominal obesity, SS exhibited the highest AUC in men (AUC = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.77–0.89), while SS and the sum of trunk skinfolds showed the highest AUC in women. In secondary analysis excluding participants with type-2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) at baseline, SS significantly predicted DM2 development in men (AUC = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.58–0.83) and bicipital skinfold (BS) did in women (AUC = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.62–0.84). The findings highlight SS significance as an indicator of overall and abdominal obesity in both sexes among Peruvian adults. Additionally, SS, and BS offer robust predictive indicators for DM2.