Sarcopenia, a clinical syndrome characterized by progressive and extensive decline in skeletal muscle mass, force and function, is widely considered part of aging. Early diagnosis is extremely important and begins with handgrip measurement using a dynamometer.
A recent study by researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in São Paulo state, Brazil, collaborating with colleagues at University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom, concluded that the diagnosis protocol should be changed by raising the handgrip strength cutoff point used to detect muscle weakness. They say new criteria proposed in their paper would be better predictors of mortality risk in older adults, enabling healthcare professionals to detect the onset of sarcopenia earlier and more accurately.
The researchers compared cutoff points proposed in previous studies on the subject. Their analysis was based on data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) relating to 6,182 men and women aged 60 or more who were tracked for 14 years.
The UFSCar/UCL study was supported by FAPESP and reported in an article published in the journal Age and Ageing.
The researchers took as their benchmark the diagnostic definitions issued in 2010 and revised in 2019 by the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP), according to which the cutoff point for handgrip strength is 27 kg for men and 16 kg for women. The article recommends raising it to 36 kg and 23 kg respectively.
"We found that lower cutoffs aren't acceptable as predictors of mortality risk. The purpose of the new reference values is to detect the risk of death as early as possible. When it's detected late, interventions such as prescribing dietary changes and resistance exercises are much harder to do. For this reason, it's important for our suggestion to be accepted by the scientific community and become a new consensus for diagnosis of sarcopenia," said Tiago da Silva Alexandre, last author of the article. Alexandre is a professor in UFSCar's Department of Gerontology and a visiting researcher at UCL.
The lower cutoff value recommended in 2019 has…