Does BMI variation change the height of foot arch in healthy adults: a cross sectional study

Background: Many research give scatterlly distributed relationship between obesity and the medial longitudinal arch of foot. Among those studies, only two studies have stratified the samples in to underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese groups in the recent past, to explore the relationship of BMI to arch of the foot on the basis of gender variation. Yet these studies contradicted each other in their finding of associating BMI variation to foot arch height. The current study explored whether changes in BMI have any impact on height of the arches of the foot. Design: Cross sectional observational study. For this purpose, 150 healthy adults were screened, out of which 100 were chosen and stratified into underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese group according to Asian guideline of BMI at convenient sampling method. Brody‘s navicular drop test was used to measure height of the foot arch of each person. Results: Spss 16 version was used for statistical analysis. One way Anova analysis was tested across four groups. The P value for left navicular drop test between groups is 0.000 < 0.005. There is significant difference between the groups for left navicular drop test compared to the right navicular drop test with changes in BMI. The P value for right navicular drop test between groups was 0.304 > 0.005. Conclusion: It is concluded that there was no statistical significance of difference found between the groups for height of foot arch. The current study concluded, navicular drop was more in overweight group and then in obese group of right and left foot against normal weight and underweight group. But there was statistical significance of difference found within the groups for left height of foot arch.