Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

As people age, muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical function decrease. The term sarcopenia is used to describe this process. Sarcopenia is associated with poor health including disability, longer hospital stays, and mortality. Four sets of definitions for sarcopenia have been developed, each which includes different measures of muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical function. Depending on which definition is used, the prevalence of sarcopenia is between 1 and 39% of older adults suggesting that the definitions do not measure the same health condition. The primary goal of this project is to evaluate the current definitions of sarcopenia to determine which is most strongly associated with poor health. Different methods of measuring muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical function will be explored. The strength of the association between each definition and health outcomes such as disability measured through activities of daily living will be compared. Each definition also uses different cut off values for the muscle measures. The appropriateness of the cut-off values for the muscle measures for each definition will be assessed using receiver operating characteristic curves with health outcomes as the outcome. This analysis will be conducted using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Further analysis will be conducted to examine the relationship between protein consumption and the risk of sarcopenia. The results of this research will contribute towards a harmonized definition of sarcopenia. Clinically, this will assist in physicians identifying people who should receive treatment or preventative care. For researchers, a harmonized definition would enable better comparisons between studies and from a population and public health perspective, more accurate estimates of the prevalence in sarcopenia will be possible. Receiver operating characteristic curves will be used