Biomarkers Consortium – Sarcopenia as a Valid Biomarker for Identifying Individuals at Risk of Disability

This project completed in August 2019.

Overview

The Biomarkers Consortium’s Sarcopenia as a Valid Biomarker for Identifying Individuals at Risk of Disability (Sarcopenia 2 Project) sought to establish evidence-based cut-points for biomarkers of muscle mass and strength; determine these biomarkers’ validity in predicting clinically meaningful outcomes (e.g., mobility, fractures, hospitalization and death); evaluate the ability of relative strength to discriminate between mobility limitation and incident disability; and explore the potential usefulness of sarcopenia as a clinical endpoint in randomized controlled clinical trials. Using sarcopenia as a clinical biomarker to identify older adults at risk of physical disability and poor health outcomes involves measuring lean soft tissue mass and muscle strength. This approach has considerable appeal for practicing clinicians who care for these patients and for pharmaceutical companies engaged in development of therapies to prevent or treat functional limitations in older adults.

The Sarcopenia 2 Project built on the results of the Sarcopenia 1 Project, which developed the initial sarcopenia criteria for predicting physical disability and clinically meaningful health outcomes for patients. The Sarcopenia 2 Project combined additional clinical datasets from epidemiologic studies and clinical trials of older adults to validate and extend the findings from the Sarcopenia 1 Project.

Goals

• Establish evidence-based cut-points for muscle mass and strength and determine their predictive validity for clinically meaningful outcomes (such as mobility, fractures, hospitalization and death).
• Evaluate relative strength as a discriminator for mobility limitation and incident disability.
• Explore the potential usefulness of sarcopenia as a clinical endpoint in randomized clinical trials.