Abstract
Aim: To estimate the prevalence of sarcopenia and its associated factors in community-dwelling elderly living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and to discuss the impact of different handgrip strength and gait speed cutoff values on sarcopenia frequencies.
Method: The health habits, functional capacity, and anthropometric measures of 745 individuals 65 years old and older from the Frailty in Brazilian Older People study were analyzed. They were classified into four diagnostic strata: no sarcopenia; pre-sarcopenia; sarcopenia; severe sarcopenia. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed. Handgrip strength and gait speed cutoff thresholds tailored to the sample population and those proposed through a consensus of experts by the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People were used to compare sarcopenia prevalences.
Results: The average age was 76.6 years, 70.3% were female, and 61.9% were Caucasian. The sarcopenia prevalence was 10.7 and 18% using the sample-tailored and the European consensus cutoff values, respectively. Sarcopenia was associated with advanced age (OR: 37.2; 95% CI: 12.3–112.4), Caucasian race (OR: 1.81; 95% CI: 1.02–3.52), single marital status (OR: 6; 95% CI: 2.2–16.39), low income (OR: 3.64; 95% CI: 2.58–8.39), and comorbidities (OR: 3.26; 95% CI: 1.28–8.3).
Conclusion: In this study, the estimated prevalence of sarcopenia was similar to those reported in most studies once tailored handgrip strength and gait speed values were adopted. A higher prevalence was observed when the cutoff values suggested by the European consensus were used. This indicates that sarcopenia frequencies must be estimated using population-specific reference values.”