Background: The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is greatly associated with obesity.
This study aimed to determine which anthropometric measure is the most predictive for type 2
diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Egyptian adults concerning body mass index (BMI), waist
circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHTR) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Methods: A
case-control study was conducted on 202 randomly selected individuals, 101 of whom were
diagnosed T2DM (≥ 20 years old) patients attending the medical units of Minia University hospital
and 101 controls who were recruited from the local community and were confirmed negative T2DM
diagnosis. Study Tool: An interview questionnaire consists two parts: 1) Demographic
characteristics, and 2) clinical data including disease history of T2DM, laboratory investigations and
anthropometric measurements. The anthropometric measurements were measured according to
standard World Health Organization protocols. Results: Cases aged 54.68±7.38 with 63.4% were
male while controls aged 47.7±11.54 and 35.6% were males. Receiver operating curve analysis
showed WC had the highest discriminatory power in men (area- under-the-curve [AUC] = 0.905 at
99.5 cm) and women (AUC=0.801 at 103.5 cm), while AUCs in men and women were (0.885 and
0.784) for WHTR, (0.790 and 0.753) for BMI, and (0.669 and 0.663) for WHR, respectively. After
binary logistic regression, age-adjusted odds ratios confirmed the association. Conclusions: WC
showed the best discriminatory power among other anthropometric measures in predicting T2DM in
Egyptian adults at 99.5 cm for men and 103.5 cm for women. Recommendations: the study should
be replicated on large probability sampling among Egyptians.