Abstract
BACKGROUND:
There is little epidemiological evidence demonstrating that dynapenic abdominal obese individuals have worse trajectories of disability than those with dynapenia and abdominal obesity alone. Our aim was to investigate whether dynapenic abdominal obesity can result in worse trajectories of activities of daily living (ADL) over eight years of follow-up.
METHODS:
We used longitudinal data from 3,723 participants from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) free from ADL disability at baseline. Using measures of handgrip strength (102cm for men; >88cm for women), participants were classified into four groups: non-dynapenic/non-abdominal obese (reference group), abdominal obese only, dynapenic only, and dynapenic abdominal obese. We used generalised linear mixed models with ADL as the outcome and the four groups according to dynapenia and abdominal obesity status as the main exposure controlled by sociodemographic, behavioural and clinical characteristics.
RESULTS:
The estimated change over time in ADL disability was significantly higher for participants with dynapenic abdominal obesity compared to those with neither condition (+0.018, 95% CI = 0.008 - 0.027). Compared to the results of our main analysis (which took into account the combination of dynapenia and abdominal obesity on the rate of change in ADL), the results of our sensitivity analysis - which examined dynapenia and abdominal obesity only as independent conditions - showed an overestimation of the associations of dynapenia only and of abdominal obesity only on the ADL disability trajectories.
CONCLUSIONS:
Dynapenic abdominal obesity is an important risk factor for functional decline in older adults.
Authors
More from IFS
Understand this issue
Policy analysis
Academic research
