Dietary Programme and Exercise Training in Combination or Separately on Managing Sarcopenic Obesity in Older Adults

Launched by THE HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY · Feb 9, 2023

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

This clinical trial is studying how a special diet and exercise program can help older adults who have sarcopenic obesity, a condition that combines loss of muscle mass and excess body fat. This condition can seriously affect health, increasing the risk of heart disease, physical difficulties, and even death. The researchers want to see if a combined approach of diet changes and exercise works better than just one of these methods alone. They will involve 380 older adults aged 65 and over who meet certain health criteria and will divide them into four groups to test different combinations of diet and exercise over 24 weeks.

To join the study, participants need to be able to communicate in Chinese and be living in the community. They should also fit specific health requirements related to muscle strength and body fat. Throughout the trial, participants can expect to engage in either a combination of dietary support and exercise, just exercise, or just dietary support, while one group will receive general health talks without any intervention. The researchers hope that by improving diet and exercise habits, they can help participants feel better physically and improve their overall health, which could have a positive impact on public health for older adults in general.

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • 1. community-dwelling older people aged \> 65 years
• • 2. who meet the diagnostic criteria of sarcopenic obesity according to the Asian Sarcopenia Working Group (ASWG)41 and the WHO definition of obesity for the Asian population, respectively: 2a) Early stage sarcopenia refers to the fulfillment of one of the following criteria: low handgrip strength \< 28 kg for men and \< 18 kg for women, low muscle quality as reflected by low appendicular skeletal muscle mass (ASM) /height squared \< 7 kg/m2 for men and \<5.7 kg/m2 for women, or low physical performance with a Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) score of \< 9; 2b) Obesity refers to the fulfillment of one of the following criteria: BMI ≥ 23kg/m2 or waist circumference ≥ 90 cm in men and ≥ 80 cm in women, or percentage of body fat \> 30%;
• • 3. able to communicate, read, and write in Chinese without significant hearing and vision problems to ensure that our instructions are understood.
• Exclusion Criteria:
• • 1. those with any form of disease or condition that might affect food intake and digestion (such as severe heart or lung diseases, renal diseases, diabetes, cancer, or autoimmune diseases);
• • 2. taking medications that may influence eating behaviour, digestion, or metabolism (such as weight loss medication);
• • 3. being addicted to alcohol, which might affect the effort to change dietary behaviour;
• • 4. having impaired mobility, which might affect participation in exercise training, as defined by a modified Functional Ambulatory Classification score of \< 7; ) having any medical implant device such as a pacemaker, because low-level currents will flow through the body when doing the bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA by InBody s10, Korea), which may cause the device to malfunction.