Relationship Between Sarcopenia and Both Physical Activity and Lifestyle in Patients With Chronic Liver Disease

Sarcopenia can affect the prognosis of patients with cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. Exercise therapy and nutritional therapy are carried out to prevent processing sarcopenia. In addition, changing lifestyle is also important. However, there are only few reports on the physical activities (PAs) and lifestyle of chronic liver disease patients and their association with sarcopenia. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between sarcopenia in patients with chronic liver disease and both PA and lifestyle.

A total of 214 out-patients with chronic liver disease were enrolled into the present study. All patients were evaluated for with or without sarcopenia based on the sarcopenia diagnostic criteria of the Japan Society of Hepatology. Then, patient's characteristics and laboratory parameters were divided into two groups with or without sarcopenia and compared. In continuous variable with significant difference in univariate analysis, cut-off value was calculated by receiver operating characteristic curve. We determined which factors were associated with sarcopenia in univariate analyses, and variables significant in the univariate analyses were entered in a multivariable logistic regression model.

Patients with chronic liver disease had a prevalence of sarcopenia of 12.6% in this study. Sarcopenia patients were older (76.48 ± 6.69 versus 66.97 ± 11.19 years old; P < 0.01), had lower body mass index (BMI) (20.84 ± 2.44 versus 23.76 ± 3.72 kg/m²; P < 0.01), lower PA (6.6 (2.34 - 19.90) versus 16.5 (6.60 - 41.23) metabolic equivalents (METs)-h/week; P < 0.01) and longer total time sitting and lying on the day (7.43 ± 4.09 versus 5.68 ± 3.17 h/day; P = 0.01); retirement status (81.5% versus 48.1%; P < 0.01) and low frequency of driving (40% versus 20%; P = 0.01) were higher in sarcopenia patients than in non-sarcopenia patients. The independent predictive factors of sarcopenia, analyzed with logistic regression, were age (odds ratio (OR): 5.89, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.15 - 16.20; P < 0.01), BMI (OR: 4.77, 95% CI: 1.87 - 12.10; P < 0.01) and PA (OR: 3.65, 95% CI: 2.15 - 16.20; P < 0.01).

Sarcopenia patients' lifestyle characteristics were longer sedentary time and low frequency of driving, high retirement. Independent predictive factors of sarcopenia were elderly, low BMI and low PA. For these patients, intervention in the lifestyle for prevention of sarcopenia may be effective for patients with chronic liver disease.