Advances in body composition: a 100-year journey

Abstract

Knowledge of human body composition at the dawn of the twentieth century was based largely on cadaver studies and chemical analyses of isolated organs and tissues. Matters soon changed by the nineteen twenties when the Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka introduced an influential new anthropometric method of fractionating body mass into subcutaneous adipose tissue and other major body components. Today, one century later, investigators can not only quantify every major body component in vivo at the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue-organ, and whole-body organizational levels, but go far beyond to organ and tissue-specific composition and metabolite estimates. These advances are leading to an improved understanding of adiposity structure-function relations, discovery of new obesity phenotypes, and a mechanistic basis of some weight-related pathophysiological processes and adverse clinical outcomes. What factors over the past one hundred years combined to generate these profound new body composition measurement capabilities in living humans? This perspective tracks the origins of these scientific innovations with the aim of providing insights on current methodology gaps and future research needs.

Fig. 1. Chronological development of human body composition methods according to foundational discoveries and observations.

Expanded comments are provided in Table 1. ADP air displacement plethysmography, BIA bioimpedance analysis, DPA dual-photon absorptiometry, DXA dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, INVA in vivo neutron activation analysis, MRI magnetic resonance imaging, MRS magnetic resonance spectroscopy, NMR nuclear magnetic resonance.