Screening for muscle loss among Asians should start at age 50, a research team from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) said yesterday, citing a cross-national study they participated in.
Reducing sarcopenia — an age-related condition characterized by the progressive loss of muscle mass and strength — is critical to achieving President William Lai’s (賴清德) “Healthy Taiwan” goal, TVGH superintendent Chen Wei-ming (陳威明) told a news conference in Taipei.
“When people have insufficient muscle mass and muscle strength, they can easily develop a degenerative joint disease and many other chronic diseases, which would affect their mobility and quality of life,” Chen said.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan has become a “super-aged society,” in which at least 20 percent of the population is 65 or older, making disability prevention just as important as medical intervention for a single disease, NYCU president Lin Chi-hung (林奇宏) said.
Based on the study, the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia this year updated its consensus on diagnosis and treatment, in which it recommended expanding sarcopenia screening to include adults aged 50 to 64, he said.
TVGH-managed Taipei Municipal Guandu Hospital superintendent and NYCU Center for Healthy Longevity and Aging Sciences director Chen Liang-kung (陳亮恭), who led the research team in Taiwan, said the group’s updated consensus was based on eight large-scale cohort studies with long-term follow-ups on nearly 35,000 cases from several Asian countries.
Clinical diagnoses of sarcopenia were previously based on European standards, but studies have found that Asian populations have a slightly different body composition, mainly characterized by a higher percentage of body fat and lower muscle mass compared with Caucasians, especially among Asian women, he said.
The Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia in 2014 began collecting data from Asian countries, finding that Asians begin significantly losing muscle mass from age 55 and muscle strength at an accelerating rate from age 45 and 70, Chen Liang-kung said.
Individuals with more muscle strength, such as handgrip strength, could delay muscle strength decline by years, he added.
Building muscle mass and training muscle strength after they start declining can improve their condition, but they might feel frustrated as the effectiveness is relatively limited, he said.
Therefore, the group suggested that sarcopenia screening be moved up from age 65 to as early as 50, to detect if a person is at high risk of developing sarcopenia and begin prevention earlier, Chen Liang-kung said.
The group’s updated consensus also simplifies the diagnostic criteria of sarcopenia to require only concurrent “low muscle mass” and “low muscle strength,” with physical performance as an outcome measure, he said.
The updated consensus was published last month in the international journal Nature Aging, the TVGH said, adding that sarcopenia is one of the few diseases that Taiwan has led in defining the diagnosis and treatment, demonstrating academic leadership in geriatric medicine.
Additional reporting by CNA
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