Association Between Daily Ginger Consumption and the Risk of Sarcopenia in a Large-Scale Older Population: The TCLSIH...

The bioactive compounds in ginger provide multiple potential health benefits, such as antioxidant effects and the ability to regulate metabolites processes. Most of these effects are involved in the mechanisms underlying sarcopenia, but the association between daily ginger consumption and the risk of sarcopenia has not been explored in population-based observational studies. This study aimed to investigate whether daily ginger consumption is associated with the risk of sarcopenia in older adults. This cohort study included 2415 older adults from the TCLSIH Cohort Study. Ginger consumption was assessed using a validated self-administered food frequency questionnaire, and sarcopenia was defined using the AWGS 2019 algorithm for sarcopenia. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine the association between daily ginger consumption and the risk of sarcopenia. Over a follow-up period of 9437 person-years, 426 incident cases of sarcopenia were documented, with a median follow-up of 4.0 years. After adjusting for sociodemographic, dietary, and lifestyle variables, the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (95% CI) for sarcopenia across increasing quartiles of daily ginger consumption were 1.00 (reference), 0.97 (0.75, 1.26), 0.97 (0.75, 1.24) and 0.66 (0.47, 0.91) (P for trend = 0.04), respectively. There was no significant interaction between daily ginger consumption and sex in association with the risk of sarcopenia (P for interaction = 0.80). Our finding indicated that higher ginger consumption is associated with a reduced risk of sarcopenia among older adults. Further studies are needed to determine the causal association.