Abstract
Sarcopenia, highly linked with fall, frailty, and disease burden, is an emerging problem in aging society. Higher protein intake has been suggested to maintain nitrogen balance. Our objective was to investigate whether pre-sarcopenia status was associated with lower protein intake. A total of 327 community-dwelling elderly people were recruited for a cross-sectional study. We adopted the multivariate nutrient density model to identify associations between low muscle mass and dietary protein intake. The general linear regression models were applied to estimate skeletal muscle mass index across the quartiles of total protein and vegetable protein density. Participants with diets in the lowest quartile of total protein density (<13.2%) were at a higher risk for low muscle mass (odds ratio (OR) 3.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.37–6.72) than those with diets in the highest quartile (≥17.2%). Similarly, participants with diets in the lowest quartile of vegetable protein density (<5.8%) were at a higher risk for low muscle mass (OR 2.34, 95% CI 1.14–4.83) than those with diets in the highest quartile (≥9.4%). Furthermore, the estimated skeletal muscle mass index increased significantly across the quartiles of total protein density (p = 0.023) and vegetable protein density (p = 0.025). Increasing daily intakes of total protein and vegetable protein densities appears to confer protection against pre-sarcopenia status.
Highlights
Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass that occurs with aging, was first described by Rosenberg in 1989 [1]
Sarcopenia drastically increases the risk of fractures, which leads to functional impairment in daily activities and incurs a huge economic burden in the form of prolonged hospitalization and rehabilitation [3,4,5,6,7]
The aims of this study were to determine if an association existed between dietary protein intake and low muscle mass (LMM), and if vegetable protein intake was associated with LMM
Summary
Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass that occurs with aging, was first described by Rosenberg in 1989 [1]. Because muscle mass decreases with aging, higher protein intake is suggested to maintain nitrogen balance in the elderly [10,11,12]. Among long-term observational studies, the relationships between dietary protein intake and the loss of muscle mass were inconsistent [18,19,20,21,22,23]. The association between vegetable protein intake and muscle mass in the elderly remains unclear. While muscle mass improved significantly with increased animal protein intake in one observational study [20], other comparisons between animal and vegetable protein combined with resistance training have yielded conflicting results [24,25]. No study has examined whether vegetable protein is associated with muscle mass in an Asian population
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