Heavy Alcohol Consumption with Alcoholic Liver Disease Accelerates Sarcopenia in Elderly Korean Males: The Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2008-2010

Although a few studies have reported that sarcopenia is associated with alcoholic liver disease (ALD), no studies have investigated this association in a large sample representative of the elderly Korean population. This was a cross-sectional study that used data from the Fourth and Fifth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANES) on subjects aged 65 years and older. Sarcopenia was defined as a skeletal muscle index (SMI) more than 1 SD below the gender-specific mean for young adults; SMI was calculated as the appendicular muscle mass divided by height squared (ASM/Ht2). Heavy alcohol consumption was defined as consuming at least 210 g/week, and elevated liver enzymes were defined as alanine aminotransferase levels of at least 32 U/L or aspartate aminotransferase levels of at least 34 U/L. ALD was defined as heavy alcohol consumption and elevated liver enzymes. The mean age of the 1,151 elderly males was 71.6 ± 0.2 years, and the prevalence of heavy alcohol consumption was 11.8% (136 subjects). SMI did not differ between the non-heavy and heavy alcohol consumer groups (7.1 ± 0.0 kg/m2 vs. 7.3 ± 0.1 kg/m2, respectively, P = 0.145). However, after stratifying by the presence of liver disease and heavy alcohol consumption and adjusting for other confounders in the multivariate logistic regression, SMI was significantly lower among heavy alcohol consumers with ALD (all P < 0.05). Additionally, two-way ANOVA showed a significant interaction between heavy alcohol consumption and liver disease (P = 0.011). Sarcopenia was accelerated in the elderly male ALD group, with a significant interaction between alcohol consumption and liver disease.