AUTHOR=Shafiee Gita , Ostovar Afshin , Maleki Birjandi Saba , Nabipour Iraj , Larijani Bagher , Heshmat Ramin 

TITLE=Development of a Simple and Practical Screening Tool for Detection of Sarcopenia in Older People: The Bushehr Elderly Health Program

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.655759

DOI=10.3389/fmed.2021.655759

ISSN=2296-858X

ABSTRACT=Background: Sarcopenia is defined by the loss of muscle mass and function with a considerable prevalence which increases morbidity and mortality. We aimed to develop and validate a simple tool for screening of sarcopenia in Iranian older population. 
Methods: In this study, we included 2,211 adults aged 60 years or older that participated in the stage II of Bushehr Elderly Health (BEH) program, a population-based prospective cohort study. We defined sarcopenia as reduced skeletal muscle strength plus low muscle mass. The study sample was divided into two parts; development set which were allocated to the development of the model (n=1499) and validation set (n=712) were allocated to validation of the model.
Results: There were 22.9% of men and 23.2% women classified as having sarcopenia based on EWGSOP-2.After selection of variables, the final models named SarSA-Mod (Sarcopenia Scoring Assessment Models) were developed with area to under curves (AUC) of 0.82 (0.79-0.86) and 0.87 (0.84-0.90) in men and women, respectively. The final model included “age”, “weight” and “calf circumference” in both sexes. The sensitivity and specificity and positive and negative predictive values for sarcopenia were 84.3% , 76.0%, 49.8 % and 94.5% for women, 85.4%, 64.8%, 40.2% and 94.2% for men, respectively. The model performance was tested in the validation set with accuracy 91% and 84% among women and men, respectively. 
Conclusions: Sarcopenia could be detected using SarSA-Mod, as a simple screening test with high accuracy among both sexes. Also, this screening test is valid, feasible, reliable and cost-effective compared to other tools.