Screening for Sarcopenia - Performance of SARC-F and SARC-CalF in Older Adults from Northern Brazil

Abstract Background: To analyze the performance of SARC-F and SARC-CalF as screening tools for sarcopenia. Methods: The sample included 312 older people community-dwelling. Sarcopenia was defined as low handgrip strength (HGS) or low gait speed (GS≤0.8m/s). HGS was measured by dynamometry and GS by the 4-meter walking speed test. For HGS, the following criteria (C) were used to identify sarcopenia in men/women: CI: <27kg/16kg; CII: <35.5kg/20.0kg; CIII: grip over body mass index <1.05/<0.79; CIV: grip strength over total body fat <1.66/<0.65; CV: grip over bodyweight <0.45/<0.34. For sarcopenia screening, the SARC-F (≥4 points) and the SARC-Calf, (≥11 points) were used. Results: Sarcopenia was identified by SARC-F in 12.5% of men and 21.0% of women and by SARC-Calf in 27.7% of men and 40.0% of women. Taking GS and HGS as references, sarcopenia ranged between 15.2% (GS) and 75.0% (CII) for men and 27% (GS) and 66% (CIII) for women. The Kappa analysis revealed no agreement between the SARC-F and the various criteria for the identification of sarcopenia in men. The same lack of agreement was observed in women with some exceptions: CI=0.161±0.074; p=0.020; GS=0.209±0.076; p=0.003. Concerning the Cohen´s kappa between the SARC-Calf and the reference criteria of sarcopenia, the following coefficients were observed as significant for women: CI=0.201±0,069 p=0.003; CII=0.186±0,064 p=0.005; GS=0.273±0.068 p=0.0001; and for men: CII=0.139±0.053 p=0.021; GS=0.223±0.099 p=0.011. ROC curves revealed the SARC-Calf with acceptable discrimination and reasonable sarcopenia predictive capacity considering a cutoff value of 10.5 in both men (AUC:67.5%; p=0.022; Se=52.9%; Sp=76.8%) and women (AUC:72.4%; p<0.001; Se=63%; Sp=68.5%) with reference to GS. Conclusions: The SARC-Calf showed greater performance than the SARC-F for screen-ing sarcopenia in the population ≥ 60 years of age in the Amazonas, measured through walking slowness