Prevalence and risk factors of sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults visiting regional medical institutions from the Kadoma Sarcopenia Study

This study aimed to investigate risk factors for sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults visiting regional medical institutions. We retrospectively analyzed medical records of 552 participants (mean age: 74.6 ± 6.7 years, males 31.3%) who underwent body composition evaluation between March 2017 and December 2018 at one of 24 medical institutions belonging to the Kadoma City Medical Association in Japan. We collected the participant’s characteristics and laboratory data. Sarcopenia was diagnosed according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia 2019. Sarcopenia, including severe sarcopenia, was detected in 22.3% of all participants, 17.3% of men, and 24.5% of women; rates increased with age. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed age (odds ratio [OR]: 2.12; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.20–3.75), obesity (OR: 0.15; 95% CI 0.07–0.32), hypertension (OR: 0.44; 95% CI 0.25–0.76), certification of long term care (OR: 3.32; 95% CI 1.41–7.81), number of daily conversations (OR: 0.44; 95% CI 0.25–0.77), and malnutrition (OR: 2.42; 95% CI 1.04–5.60) as independent predictors of sarcopenia. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated that the cut-off for daily conversations defining sarcopenia was 4.8 persons. The prevalence of sarcopenia in this study was 22.3%. Besides traditional risk factors for sarcopenia, the number of daily conversations was an independent factor.