Prognostic potential of body composition indices in detecting risk of musculoskeletal injury in army officer cadet profiles.

OBJECTIVES: High values in most of the body composition indices have been related to musculoskeletal injuries, but limited data exists on the accuracy of these diagnoses when detecting musculoskeletal injuries in military populations. METHODS: The suitability of body fat percentage, body mass index, fat mass index and fat free mass index to identify injury risk was examined in a group of army officer recruits. All body composition diagnoses were measured in 268 male army officer recruits prior to the commencement of basic combat training. Musculoskeletal injury was identified using codes from the International Classification of Diseases. The area under the curve, in the receiver operating characteristic curve, was used to quantify the overall ability to discriminate between those who were injured and those who were not. RESULTS: The statistics indicated that all indices, apart from body mass index, had a significant possibility to detect musculoskeletal injury potential (p < 0.05; 61%-63%). The respective cut-off points used to classify individuals as injured were for body fat percentage >22, for fat mass index >6.5 and for fat free mass index <16.5. CONCLUSION: Body mass index values can not similarly detect the possibility of occurrence of musculoskeletal injuries in army officer recruits, just as other body composition diagnoses related to fat mass or/and free fat mass. However, the cut off-points related to the overall diagnostic performance of each body composition index should be used with caution and in accordance with the aims of each experimental setting.