Yubi-Wakka Test for Sarcopenia Screening: Influence of Abdominal Obesity on Diagnostic Performance

Sarcopenia and obesity represent emerging health problems globally especially in the aging population.Both are distinct entities yet share similar hormonal and inflammatory pathophysiological mechanisms, 1,2) and clinical complications including frailty, falls, physical disability and mortality.When co-existent, the confluent result is a condition known as sarcopenic obesity (SO) which has reported prevalence rates ranging from 0.9% to 30.1% in older persons. 3)SO may result in synergistic health implications with worse muscle function than either of these conditions alone, 4) highlighting the need for effective detection methods in the community.Calf circumference measured by trained personnel in the standing position has good discriminatory ability for sarcopenia case-finding amongst healthy community-dwelling older persons 5) although the diagnostic performance may be attenuated in SO due to decreased sensitivity and resultant underdetection. 6)The Yubi-Wakka (YW) or finger-ring test, an alternative to calf circumference measurement, is a self-administered, low cost and practicable screening test with good diagnostic performance for sarcopenia.It was assessed to be a valid screening test in comparison to the actual measurement of skeletal muscle mass index. 7)However, it is unclear whether the diagnostic performance of YW differs between sarcopenia and SO.As an important marker of SO, it is important to understand whether abdominal obesity affects the diagnostic performance of YW. 4) Thus, this study was conducted to determine the influence of abdominal obesity on the diagnostic performance of YW for sarcopenia identification amongst healthy community-dwelling older adults.This cross-sectional study used the data of the second follow-up visit of healthy community-dwelling older adults from the longitudinal cohort study "Longitudinal Assessment of Biomarkers for characterisation of early Sarcopenia and Osteosarcopenic Obesity