Cardiometabolic implication of sarcopenia: The Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (KNHANES) 2008-2010

Background: Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, contributes to various adverse health outcomes in the elderly. It may be associated with cardiometabolic risk. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between sarcopenia and cardiometabolic risks and to determine an appropriate operational definition for sarcopenia from a cardiometabolic perspective. Material and methods: Using the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2008-2010 (n = 20,812, = 20 years old), appendicular skeletal muscle mass (ASM), measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, divided by height squared (ASM/ht(2)) or ASMdivided byweight (ASM/wt) were calculated to define sarcopenia. Class I or class II sarcopenia was defined as one or two standard deviations, respectively, below the sex-specific means of reference values obtained from adults aged 20-29 years. Results: The respective prevalence rates of class I and class II sarcopenia based on ASM/ht(2)were 18.6% and 3.5% in men and 6.1% and 0.2% in women. The rates based on ASM/wtwere 25.1% and 4.7% in men and 23.6% and 5.5% in women, respectively. The rate of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance index increased with the severity of sarcopenia defined by ASM/wt, but there were opposite associations for ASM/ht(2) in both sexes. Subjects with sarcopenia based on the ASM/wt index had higher Framingham10-year scores and greater risk of cardiovascular diseases, but these relationships were not provided consistently using the ASM/ht(2) measure. Conclusions: Sarcopenia, defined by the ASM/wt index, but not by ASM/ht2, was significantly associated with an increased risk of cardiometabolic disorders in Korean adults. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).