Development of a Simple and Practical Screening Tool for Detection of Sarcopenia in Older People: The Bushehr Elderly Health Program

Background: Sarcopenia is defined by the loss of muscle mass and function with a considerable prevalence which increases morbidity and mortality. We aimed to develop and validate a simple tool for screening of sarcopenia in Iranian older population. Methods: In this study, we included 2,211 adults aged 60 years or older that participated in the stage II of Bushehr Elderly Health (BEH) program, a population-based prospective cohort study. We defined sarcopenia as reduced skeletal muscle strength plus low muscle mass. The study sample was divided into two parts; development set which were allocated to the development of the model (n = 1,499) and validation set (n = 712) were allocated to validation of the model. Results: There were 22.9% of men and 23.2% women classified as having sarcopenia based on EWGSOP-2.After selection of variables, the final models named SarSA-Mod (Sarcopenia Scoring Assessment Models) were developed with area to under curves (AUC) of 0.82 (0.79–0.86) and 0.87 (0.84–0.90) in men and women, respectively. The final model included “age,” “weight,” and “calf circumference” in both sexes. The sensitivity and specificity and positive and negative predictive values for sarcopenia were 84.3, 76.0, 49.8, and 94.5% for women, 85.4, 64.8, 40.2, and 94.2% for men, respectively. The model performance was tested in the validation set with accuracy 91 and 84% among women and men, respectively. Conclusions: Sarcopenia could be detected using SarSA-Mod, as a simple screening test with high accuracy among both sexes. Also, this screening test is valid, feasible, reliable and cost-effective compared to other tools.