A recent study has found that a longer duration of diabetes, or developing the disease during midlife, worsens the risk of sarcopenia among older people.
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| Photo: An Elderly with Diabetes | InStyleHealth |
The research involved 824 elderly patients, aged 65 –
84 years, who had no sarcopenia at baseline. From 2012 – 2017 follow-up, sarcopenia
incidence was identified according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia criteria.
What is sarcopenia?
Sarcopenia
is defined as a medical condition characterized by loss of skeletal muscle mass
and function. While it is primarily a disease of the elderly, its development
may be correlated with conditions that are not exclusively seen in older people.
Majority of the participants did not have diabetes.
The disease was diagnosed in midlife in 173 patients and later in life for 99
patients. Within the follow-up period, 47 participants or 5.7% developed sarcopenia.
Utilizing the logistic regression analysis has revealed
that those with diabetes were more than twice as likely to develop sarcopenia than
their non-diabetic counterparts. The analysis was adjusted for age, gender, body
mass index, comorbidities, diet & lifestyle, and medical history.
Breaking down according to the timing of diabetes,
researchers saw that being diagnosed with the disease in midlife was a strong
risk factor for sarcopenia, increasing its risk by more than three times.
Later-life diagnosis, however, had no significant impact on the sarcopenia risk
based on the findings.
Furthermore, the risk of sarcopenia also increased
with a longer diabetes duration. For those who have had diabetes for >15
years were nearly 5 times as likely to have sarcopenia than the non-diabetics.
The researchers stated that the results suggest the
possibility that the decreasing duration of diabetes by prevention of diabetes
in midlife reduces the risk of incident sarcopenia in later life in the general
Japanese population.
For complete details of the clinical study, click here.
Source: J Diabetes Investig 2021;doi:10.1111/jdi.13550