Association between CT-Measured Abdominal Skeletal Muscle Mass and Pulmonary Function.

Eun Kyung Choe,Seung Ho Choi,Hae Yeon Kang,Joo Sung Kim,Young Lee

doi:10.3390/jcm8050667

Abstract

A relationship between lung function and sarcopenia has been suggested. This study aimed to evaluate the association between lung function and abdominal skeletal muscle mass, as measured by computed tomography (CT). The clinical records of 1907 subjects (1406 males, mean age 53.1 ± 9.2 years), who underwent routine health check-ups, including spirometry and abdominal CT, were retrospectively reviewed. The CT-measured skeletal muscle index (SMICT, cm2/(kg/m2) was defined as the skeletal muscle area of the third lumbar vertebrae (L3) level that is normalized by the body mass index. The mean values of forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) gradually increased as the SMICT quartiles increased (all p for trend < 0.05). The proportions of subjects with less than 80% of the predicted FVC (%) and predicted FEV1 (%) significantly decreased as the SMICT quartiles increased (all p for trend < 0.05). The β regression coefficients for FVC and FEV1 significantly increased as the SMICT quartiles increased after adjusting for other confounding variables (p for trend < 0.05). This study showed that abdominal muscle mass, which was precisely measured by CT, independently affected lung function proportionally after adjusting for confounding factors in relatively healthy adults.

Highlights

Sarcopenia, which is described as the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with aging [1,2], is related to numerous health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, metabolic disorders, and risk of death in elderly individuals [3,4,5,6]
Systolic blood pressure (BP), diastolic BP, weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, fasting glucose, and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) values significantly decreased as the SMICT quartiles increased
Participants with low muscle mass had low forced vital capacity (FVC) or FEV1 values, and lung function proportionally increased according to the SMICT quartile

Summary

Introduction

Sarcopenia, which is described as the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with aging [1,2], is related to numerous health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, metabolic disorders, and risk of death in elderly individuals [3,4,5,6]. Recent studies have reported that low skeletal muscle mass is associated with poor lung function in asymptomatic subjects without clinically apparent lung disease [11,12,13]. A study on the relationship between skeletal muscle mass and lung function in relatively healthy adults used generalized skeletal muscle mass, as measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) [13]. Another recent study revealed that poor pulmonary function was associated with low muscle mass, as determined by dual-energy

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