Sarcopenic Obesity Predicts Early Attrition in Treatment-Seeking Patients with Obesity: A Longitudinal Pilot Study

Attrition is a major cause of failure in obesity treatment, which is still not fully understood. The identification of factors related to this outcome is of clinical relevance. We aimed to assess the relationship between sarcopenic obesity (SO) and early attrition. Early attrition was assessed at six months, and two groups of patients were selected from a large cohort of participants with overweight or obesity enrolled at the Outpatient Clinic of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Beirut Arab University (Lebanon). Body composition was measured using a bioimpedance analyser (Tanita BC-418) and participants at baseline were categorized as having or not having SO. The "dropout group" included 72 participants (cases) compared to 31 participants (controls) in the "completer group", with the former displaying a higher prevalence of SO than the latter (51.0% vs. 25.8%; p = 0.016). In the same direction, Poisson regression analysis showed that SO increased the relative risk of dropout by nearly 150% (RR = 1.45; 95% CI = 1.10-1.89; p = 0.007) after adjustment for age, gender, body mass index (BMI), age at first dieting, sedentary habits and weight-loss expectation. In conclusion, in a "real-world" outpatient clinical setting, the presence of SO at baseline increases the risk of dropout at six months. New directions of future research should be focused on identifying new strategies to reduce the attrition rate in this population.