ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1539729
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Perspectives on Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis in Musculoskeletal AgingView all 3 articles
Associations between sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, and the phases of sarcopenia to severe sarcopenia: Findings from the WCHAT study
Provisionally accepted
Zhigang Xu
Ya MaHuang NingShuli JiaGongchang Zhang
Xin Xia
Fengjuan Hu
Meiling Ge
Xiaolei Liu
Birong Dong*- West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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Background: Sarcopenia not only leads to impaired physical function but also may be associated with changes in sleep and mental health as individuals age. Research on the relationships between sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression and adult-onset sarcopenia is limited, however, with no reports of the associations between them and different severity of sarcopenia. The objective of this research endeavor is to investigate the associations between sarcopenia and sleep disturbances, anxiety, as well as depression, within a multi-ethnic population in western China.We conducted a cross-sectional study consisting of 4500 participants from the WCHAT study. The diagnostic method recommended by the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia in 2019 was used to screen for sarcopenia. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7), and the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) were used to assess sleep quality, anxiety, and depression, respectively. The relationships among sleep, anxiety, depression, and the different sarcopenia subgroups were evaluated by using multivariate regression models. In addition, subgroup of gender analysis were performed.Results: Among the 4500 participants surveyed in the western region of China, 408 (9.06%) were diagnosed with sarcopenia and 618 (13.73%) with severe sarcopenia. A total of 2515 individuals (55.88%) had poor sleep quality, while 842 (18.71%) suffered from anxiety, and 1045 (23.22%) had depression. Good sleeping quality were negatively associated with severe sarcopenia (OR:0.80, 95%CI 0.66-0.97) in model 1, whereas depression was positively associated with severe sarcopenia in three models (model 1:OR: 1.39, 95%CI 1.13-1.71; model 2: OR: 1.46, 95%CI 1.16-1.85; model 3: OR: 1.43, 95%CI 1.13-1.81). However, anxiety status was not associated with sarcopenia in our study.It was found that good sleep quality were negatively associated with severe sarcopenia, and depression was positively associated with severe sarcopenia. These findings suggested that early intervention in sleep quality and depression may be one of the effective strategies to delay or reduce the severity of sarcopenia.
Keywords: Sarcopenia, Western China, Multi-ethnic, sleep quality, Anxiety and depression
Received: 08 Feb 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Ma, Ning, Jia, Zhang, Xia, Hu, Ge, Liu and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Birong Dong, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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