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Muscle mass reflects and influences health status. Its reliable estimation would be of value for epidemiology.

The aim of the study was to derive and validate anthropometric prediction equations to quantify whole-body skeletal muscle mass (SM) in adults.

The derivation sample included 423 subjects (227 women) aged 18–81 y with a body mass index (BMI; in kg/m²) of 15.9–40.8. The validation sample included 197 subjects (105 women) aged 19–83 y with a BMI of 15.7–36.4. Both samples were of mixed ethnic/racial groups. All underwent whole-body magnetic resonance imaging to quantify SM (dependent variable for multiple regressions) and anthropometric variables (independent variables).

Two prediction equations with high practicality and optimal derivation correlations with SM were further investigated to assess agreement and bias by using Bland-Altman plots and …