Low skeletal muscle mass, sarcopoenic obesity predict albuminuria

Sarcopoenic obesity and low skeletal muscle may increase the risk of albuminuria in the general population, a recent study has shown.

Researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of 29,942 participants (mean age, 49.9±7.9 years; 54 percent male) who had undergone at least two routine examinations from 2006 to 2013. The skeletal muscle mass was measured using bioelectrical impedance, and sarcopoenia was defined as being below the mean of the sex-specific skeletal muscle index (SMI) for a young reference group.

Over the 7-year duration of the study, 981 participants developed albuminuria, yielding an incidence rate of 3.3 percent. The cumulative incidence of albuminuria showed significantly greater increments in those with lower baseline SMI.

Cox proportional hazard regression confirmed that participants in the lowest vs highest tertile of SMI were significantly more likely to develop albuminuria (hazard ratio [HR], 1.44, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.22–1.71). This remained true even after adjusting for general or central obesity.

Sarcopoenia (HR, 1.35, 95 percent CI, 1.09–1.67) and obesity (HR, 1.38, 95 percent CI, 1.15–1.65) were both also separately correlated with the risk of albuminuria. Sarcopoenic obesity, however, emerged as the strongest predictor of albuminuria, conferring a 53-percent greater likelihood relative to comparators who had neither sarcopenia nor obesity (HR, 1.53, 95 percent CI, 1.23–1.91).

“[T]o the best of our knowledge, this is the first report investigating the relationship between sarcopenic obesity as well as relative skeletal muscle mass determined by SMI, and albuminuria development using a large, general population-based 7-year longitudinal dataset,” the researchers said.