Assessment and prediction of thoracic gas volume in pregnant women: an evaluation in relation to body composition assessment using air displacement plethysmography

Assessment of body fat (BF) in pregnant women is important when investigating the relationship between maternal nutrition and offspring health. Convenient and accurate body composition methods applicable during pregnancy are therefore needed. Air displacement plethysmography, as applied in Bod Pod, represents such a method since it can assess body volume (BV) which, in combination with body weight, can be used to calculate body density and body composition. However, BV must be corrected for the thoracic gas volume (TGV) of the subject. In non-pregnant women, TGV may be predicted using equations, based on height and age. It is unknown, however, whether these equations are valid during pregnancy. Thus, we measured the TGV of women in gestational week 32 (n 27) by means of plethysmography and predicted their TGV using equations established for non-pregnant women. Body weight and BV of the women was measured using Bod Pod. Predicted TGV was significantly (P = 0.033) higher than measured TGV by 6% on average. Calculations in hypothetical women showed that this overestimation tended to be more pronounced in women with small TGV than in women with large TGV. The overestimation of TGV resulted in a small but significant (P = 0.043) overestimation of BF, equivalent to only 0.5% BF, on average. A Bland-Altman analysis showed that the limits of agreement were narrow (from -1.9 to 2.9% BF). Thus, although predicted TGV was biased and too high, the effect on BF was marginal and probably unimportant in many situations.