Provisional cut-off point for diagnosis of sarcopenia in elderly people from Caldas (Colombia)

Introduction: Sarcopenia is defined as a decrease in muscle mass associated with reduced performance and physical function, being a predictor of adverse outcomes in the elderly. Its diagnosis requires body composition data of healthy young population to establish reference values of low muscle mass. Objective: To establish provisional cut-off point for sarcopenia in Caldenses elderly from skeletal muscle composition data of young people using electric bioimpedance. Materials and methods: Body composition data from healthy young people, aged 18 to 35 years were used to calculate skeletal muscle mass index. The Kolmogorov Smirnov test was applied to evaluate normality of the data and then the average and standard deviation of muscle mass index was established for both men and women. Results: Based on these data, a skeletal muscle mass index of two standard deviations below the mean of the muscular mass index in young people was established as low muscle mass. The cut off points were 6.42 kg/m(2) and 8.39 kg/m(2) for women and men respectively. Conclusion: This is the first study that offers a description of skeletal muscle body composition in young Colombians, and provides cut-off points for the diagnosis of sarcopenia in the elderly in the Central-Andean region. These values obtained are similar to those proposed by some Asian authors, which shows that population of this region has body composition characteristics similar to those from Asia.