P948 Hand Grip Strength is a useful objective measure associated with fatigue and impaired quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract

Abstract Background Hand grip strength (HGS) is a recognised tool for diagnosis / screening of muscle impairment and sarcopenia, however it remains underutilised in IBD cohorts. The aim of the study was to measure the prevalence of muscle impairment by HGS and association with quality of life in a cohort of UC patients in disease remission. Methods Potential subjects were prospectively identified for selection from the Gastroenterology Department in St. Vincent’s University Hospital Outpatient Department. All patients had a confirmed diagnosis of UC for >3 month with stable, quiescent disease (no escalation of medical therapy in the previous 3 months with a documented Faecal Calprotectin (FCP) <100 μg/g). Along with anthropometry data, HGS measurements were performed using the Jamar®Plus+Dynamometer. Quality of life scores were measured using 36-item Short Form Survey (SF-36), Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (SIBDQ), and Short Health Scale questionnaires were measured. Linear regression was used to calculate standardised β-coefficients for correlation analysis. Non-parametric data was analysed using algorithms including Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Results 60% (n=18) of subjects had a HGS outside the lower limit of the 95% confidence interval of age and sex matched normative values, indicative of impaired grip strength. This was significantly more prevalent in subjects with normal BMI than BMI>30 (p=0.035). Prevalence of fatigue was 43.3% according to SIBDQ question 2a and ’Energy/Fatigue’ scores of SF-36 were significantly lower compared to normal Irish population data (51.0 v 64.8, p = 0.0002). Composite scores of fatigue in both SIBDQ (question 2a) and SF-36 were compared, resulting in a standardized β-coefficient of 0.52 of statistical significance (p value = 0.003).Significant correlation was demonstrated between predicted HGS and ’Energy/Fatigue’ SF-36 scores (standardised β-coefficient = 0.4, p value = 0.027). Conclusion HGS is a convenient means of measuring muscle function in an IBD population and correlates significantly with ’Energy/fatigue’ SF-36 scores. These results suggest sarcopenia as a potentially important contributor to fatigue in patients with IBD and suggest HGS is an objective, easily applied objective measure which merits validation as an outcome measure for intervention studies to improve fatigue in patients with IBD.