Predicting visceral obesity based on facial characteristics (BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine)

Background: Visceral obesity is associated with facial characteristics and chronic disease, but no studies on the best predictor of visceral obesity based on facial characteristics have been reported. The aims of the present study were to investigate the association of visceral obesity with facial characteristics, to determine the best predictor of normal waist and visceral obesity among these characteristics, and to compare the predictive power of individual and combined characteristics. Methods: Cross-sectional data were obtained from 11347 adult Korean men and women ranging from 18 to 80 years old. We examined 15 facial characteristics to identify the strongest predictor of normal and viscerally obese subjects and assessed the predictive power of the combined characteristics. Results: FD_94_194 (the distance between both inferior ear lobes) was the best indicator of the normal and viscerally obese subjects in the following groups: Men-18-50 (p