Risco de sarcopenia em idosos: prevalência e fatores associados

Abstract

Aging is a gradual and natural process that alters the body's balance, which can be influenced by environmental and psychological factors, as well as changes in body composition, in which there may be an increase in adiposity and a reduction in lean body mass, in particular body mass. skeletal muscle, such loss can be associated with sarcopenia. To delimit which seniors would benefit from a formal assessment, a simpler screening would improve the global assessment for such a pathology, then a previous assessment for the risk of sarcopenia arises. Thus, two separate surveys were carried out: 1) a systematic review to estimate the prevalence of sarcopenia risk in community-dwelling elderly; 2) a population-based cross-sectional study to: a) estimate the prevalence of sarcopenia risk in the elderly b) to verify the direct and indirect effects of sociodemographic, health and behavioral factors on the risk of sarcopenia in the elderly. For the systematic review, the electronic databases Medline (via PubMed), Web of Science and Scopus were searched, and cross-sectional studies or baselines of longitudinal studies that presented the prevalence of the risk of sarcopenia were selected. The initial search identified 1.971 studies for analysis, after excluding duplicates, reading the title and abstracts, 12 articles were restored, again after searches and exclusions of nine articles were selected for final review. The second study was carried out with 294 elderly people enrolled in the Family Health Strategy and living in the urban/rural area of the municipality of Matutina, MG. The elderly who met the study criteria and gave their consent to participate, answered a structured questionnaire applied in the form of an interview, containing questions about sociodemographic, health and behavioral factors. The risk of sarcopenia was assessed by the SARC-F + CC. For data analysis, descriptive statistics procedures, frequency distribution, calculation of central tendency and dispersion measures for the analyzed variables were applied. To verify the variables directly and indirectly associated with the risk of sarcopenia, a path analysis was performed. According to the systematic review, the risk of sarcopenia ranged from 7.3% to 46.8%. On the other hand, the cross-sectional study indicated a prevalence of 28.6% for the risk of sarcopenia in elderly people in Matutina, MG. The factors directly associated with a higher risk of sarcopenia were: older age, lower BMI, higher risk of malnutrition and greater dependence for basic activities of daily living. Indirectly, the variables associated with a higher risk of sarcopenia were: lower level of physical activity, mediated by worse functional disability; and greater sedentary behavior, mediated by greater dependence for basic activities of daily living. Thus, these results demonstrate that, based on the development of health policies and intervention programs based on the promotion of good eating habits and the practice of physical activity, they could delay the reversible factors associated with the risk of sarcopenia in the elderly.