Adverse outcomes of sarcopenic obesity in older adults: a scoping review

Sarcopenic obesity (SO) has been shown to have a substantial impact on health. However, the current understanding of adverse outcomes associated with SO is incomplete.

A scoping review of the literature in PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang Data was conducted from inception to 5 September 2025 to identify articles on adverse outcomes associated with SO in older adults.

A total of 4,954 studies met the screening criteria, and 21 studies met the inclusion criteria. These studies reported 11 adverse outcomes related to SO across four domains. (1) Impaired physical function and independence domains included a decline in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL; three studies), a decline in ADL (three studies), impaired body function (two studies), and disability (one study). (2) Physical health domains included cardiovascular disease (three studies), metabolic syndrome (one study), and mortality (nine studies). (3) Safety-related incident domains included fractures (two studies) and falls (two studies). (4) Neuropsychological and frailty status domains included depression (two studies) and frailty (one study).

This scoping review suggests that SO is longitudinally associated with a range of adverse health outcomes. However, due to the small number of studies and limited sample sizes, more high-quality studies are necessary to further explore the longitudinal relationships between SO and adverse health outcomes.