Classical errors in traditional human body composition

Introduction. - A Pubmed hit search teaches us that human Body Composition (BC) is a frequently used issue in sport science publications. Body composition is a branch of human biology and is subject to variable interpretation by its users. Quantifying human BC plays an important role in monitoring performance and training but inaccurate interpretation of terms and techniques plays a key role in a series of classical errors. Facts and results. - The purpose of this study is to make an overall review of a number of errors that occur in BC e.g. in sport science and sport medicine in particular. It was found that the transfer from morphological BC to chemical BC interpretations is the major origin of error. Two of the main methods of estimating BC in this review (BMI and hydrodensitometry) have been used for decades, the third method (DXA) is more recent. A thorough analysis using in vivo and in vitro measures indicated that hydrodensitometry remains a somewhat unreliable standard method, especially in subjects whose fat-free mass density differs from the assumed value of 1.10 g/mL. The use of BMI in adiposity studies despite its good relationship with obesity in general remains questionable since this index is only a very rough estimate of relative tissue distribution. Finally, DXA provides good estimations but lacks clinical precision for all its BC variables. (C) 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.