Abstract
Background
Sarcopenia was listed as a treatment trait in behavioral/risk factors of severe asthma, but studies between asthma and sarcopenia were scant. This study plans to determine the associations between sarcopenia with asthmatic prevalence, symptoms, lung function and comorbidity.
Methods
15404 individuals from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS) and 10263 individuals from Study on global AGEing and adult health(SAGE) in China were included in this study. Four components of this study were respectively used to assess bidirectional association in the prevalence between sarcopenia with asthma, and estimate the relationships between sarcopenia with asthmatic symptoms, lung function and comorbidity via generalized additive models. The 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale≥12 scores was classified as depression in CHARLS.
Results
In CHARLS and SAGE, the prevalence of sarcopenia in asthmatics was higher than those without asthma. Asthmatics with sarcopenia had a significantly increased prevalence of severe shortness of breath(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=3.71, 95%CI: 1.43-9.60) and airway obstruction in SAGE(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=6.82, 95%CI: 2.54-18.34) and an obvious reduction of PEF in CHARLS and SAGE(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted RR=0.86, 95%CI: 0.82-0.91) compared to asthmatics without sacropenia. The presence of sarcopenia was positively associated with the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=5.76, 95%CI:2.01-16.5) and depression(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=1.87, 95%CI:1.11-3.14) in asthmatics.
Conclusions
Our findings indicated that sarcopenia partakes in the development of asthma by affecting lung function and comorbidity and maybe considered a treatable trait of asthma management.