Journal of the American Medical Directors Association
JAMDA OnlineOriginal StudyAssociation of Sarcopenia and Obesity With Multimorbidity in Korean Adults: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study
Section snippets
Participants
In this nationwide cross-sectional study, we used the database from the Korea National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2008 to 2011. The KNHANES is a series of cross-sectional surveys with nationally representative samples from the civilian, non-institutionalized, South Korean population, using a stratified and multistage probability cluster design.16, 17 The present study was restricted to participants aged ≥20 years who completed the health examination, including whole
Results
The participant's characteristics are shown in Table 1. The mean age was 54.8 (SE, 0.2) years and of the ASM index was 28.4% (SE, 0.1). Overall, 39.2% had hypertension, 2.6% had CVD, 2.1% had stroke, 12.5% had diabetes, 14.9% had arthritis, 12.7% had lung disease, 2.2% had cancer, and 14.8% had depression. Moreover, 26.9% had multimorbidity defined as 2 or more chronic diseases.
Table 2 shows the characteristics of participants classified according to whether they had sarcopenia, obesity, or
Discussion
Our results suggest that both sarcopenia and obesity contribute independently to increased risk of multimorbidity. In addition, we found that the greatest increased risk of multimorbidity was in the combined sarcopenic obesity group compared with either of the individual conditions. The risk of multimorbidity in sarcopenic obesity was 3.0 times higher compared with the nonsarcopenic and nonobese (normal) group. The estimated size of the sarcopenic obesity effect was greater than the estimated
Conclusion
In conclusion, the association between sarcopenia and/or obesity and multimorbidity was investigated in Korean adults. Our findings suggest that both objectively measured sarcopenia and abdominal obesity are associated with increased risk of multimorbidity independently of potential confounding factors. Moreover, sarcopenic obesity showed a greater risk of multimorbidity than sarcopenia or obesity alone. To examine the causal association from our findings, further longitudinal studies may be
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2021, Experimental GerontologyCitation Excerpt :The present findings both support and add to previous literature. They support previous literature through confirming that an association exists between multimorbidity and sarcopenia in a large representative sample of older English adults and add to the existing literature through demonstrating that multimorbidity at baseline is associated with a higher odds of sarcopenia over twelve years of follow-up (Dodds et al., 2020; An and Kim, 2016). There are several plausible mechanisms that likely explain why multimorbidity at baseline increases odds for sarcopenia at follow-up.
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2021, Preventive MedicinePrevalence of sarcopenic obesity and sarcopenic overweight in the general population: The lifelines cohort study
2021, Clinical NutritionCitation Excerpt :The presence of obesity with low muscle mass or strength is highly related with metabolism-related diseases, such as metabolic syndrome and functional disabilities [32,40]. Previously, it has been found that sarcopenia and obesity are independently associated with increased risk of multimorbidity, but when coexistent, as with SO, the risk of multimorbidity is greater [31]. The determinants and causes of SO must be identified to develop prevention and treatment strategies for this disease, particularly concerning lifestyle habits, which are more controllable in comparison to age-related systemic changes and genetic factors.
The present study was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Korea Ministry of Education (grant number: 2014R1A1A2059106).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.