I have a dietary intervention experiments on diet-induced obesity animal model and the results demonstrated that the intervention reduced body weight and fat mass and increased lean mass with statistical significance.
Although weight loss ≥ 5% is considered meaningful, what percentage changes in fat mass and lean mass is known as clinically meaningful?
If you have answer for this question, please also provide the reference so that I can cite it in my paper.
Thank you!
Kindly check https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315740/
Also check https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083742/
So basically there is no conclusive research on this topic.
My rationale is to be clinical meaningful, the reduction in body fat has to accomplish some of the clinical outcomes for patient such as improve their cardiovascular health.
Such outcomes would be measure by variable, say VO2 max because VO2max is the one of the best measure of fitness for exercise.
1. A research explore the change in body fat with [maximal oxygen consumption in adult:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5535345/.
- They do concluded decrease in %BF increase VO2 max consumption, however, the research did not specify what how much change in BF produce change in oxygen consumption
2. Another research continue on the subject [measure the Vo2 max of athlete and non-athlete did not find statistically significant in correlation between BF reduction and increase V02 max: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25653935/
=> We can deduce
- Reduction in BF only clinically meaningful when the BF is above a certain level (say 30%)
- Or the sample of this study is too small and we could not conclude it
What I would do next is
- check current guideline (especially on sport and nutrition) to see if they mentioned any reduction in %BF is desired.
- Dig into the literature to see if there are more variables and markers to measure meaningful reduction in BF. I would suggest you continue with this research since it has a lot of good sources on it:
Article Effect of BMI, Body Fat Percentage and Fat Free Mass on Maxi...
Will update the thread when I have more time.
Dear Guo
in human studies, if you check different references, cut-offs change. during the last few weeks, I checked many references to find a certain answer to nearly the same question.
I recently at a cross-sectional study that is already drafting with 750 individuals find a direct relation between fat mass and risk of sarcopenia which shown a 4% higher risk of sarcopenia by each 1 kg increase in BFM.
however, in animal studies, it is more complicated to determine it. I believe at the current time, drawing the line diagram of changes during monitoring and check the changes statically is the best way. you can also consider clinical outcomes of low SMM or BFM as indicators. that is how sarcopenia cut-offs generally developed
In human obesity, there is convincing evidence that 5-10% weight loss of baseline weight is fair and clinically meaningful within 6-12 months. Weight loss of less than 5% may not produce clinical significance, and that of more than 10% may lead to negative health impacts. However, sudden or short-term weight loss over 10% may cause metabolic distress or even shock. In all cases, body composition is essential and even more important than total weight loss, i.e., reducing fat mass (FM) while maintaining lean body mass (LBM) and body fluid. The composition of weight loss varies over time and is influenced by many factors particularly, diet composition, energy intake, gender, degree of obesity, physical inactivity, and metabolic or hormonal status, as well as the type of intervention like dietary energy restriction, fasting, and use of drugs, herbs, supplements, or nutraceuticals. Maximizing FM loss is the ultimate aim that can be achieved by monitoring some of the above confounding factors. Some research achieved a weight loss of 98% FM and only 2% LBM [1-4].
References:
1. Willoughby D, Hewlings S, Kalman D. Body composition changes in weight loss: strategies and supplementation for maintaining lean body mass, a brief review. Nutrients 2018; 10, 1876. 10 pages. doi:10.3390/nu10121876.
2. Evert AB, Dennison M, Gardner CD, et al. Nutrition therapy for adults with diabetes or prediabetes: a consensus report. Diabetes Care 2019;42:731-754. doi.org/10.2337/dci19-0014.
3. Heymsfield SB, Gonzalez MCC, Shen W, et al. Weight loss composition is one-fourth fat-free mass: a critical review and critique of this widely cited rule. Obesity Reviews 2014; 15(4): 310–321. doi:10.1111/obr.12143.
4. Williamson DA, Bray GA, Ryan DH. Is 5% weight loss a satisfactory criterion to define clinically significant weight loss? Obesity 2015; 23(12): 23019-2320. www.obesityjournal.org.
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