Prevalence of sarcopenia and associated factors in hospitalised older patients: A cross‐sectional study

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence and factors associated with sarcopenia in a sample of older inpatients. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in three acute geriatric wards in 2012. Sarcopenia was defined according to the criteria of the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia. RESULTS: We included 407 patients aged 81.0 ± 8.0 years. The prevalence of sarcopenia was 31% in the whole study population. Multiple logistic regression showed that being a female (odds ratio (OR) 4.75, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.45-9.20), smoking (OR 2.94, 95% CI 1.26-6.69), cognitive impairment (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.10-3.95), polypharmacy (OR 2.36, 95% CI 1.28-4.34) and body mass index (OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.68-0.83) were independently associated with sarcopenia. CONCLUSION: Sarcopenia was highly prevalent in older inpatients. In addition to factors previously reported to be associated with sarcopenia, we found that polypharmacy was associated with sarcopenia. As the direction of causality remains uncertain, these relationships deserve further study.