Oral Presentation 6th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research 2024

Relationship between traditional and newer measures of body composition with handgrip strength and sit-to-stand tests in healthy middle-age Australian women using DXA, BIA and 3D optical scanning.   (#17)

Christopher J Oliver 1 , Mike Climstein 2 3 , Nedeljka Rosic 4 , Stephen Myers 5 6
  1. Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia
  2. Clinical and Health Services, Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University, Bilinga, QLD, Australia
  3. Exercise and Sport Science Exercise, Health & Performance Faculty Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences,, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  4. Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University, Bilinga, QLD, Australia
  5. National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine, Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia
  6. NatMed-Research, Evans Head, NSW, Australia

Background: Handgrip strength (HGS) and sit-to-stand (STS) tests are used as indicators of physical performance. HGS is used as a measure of upper body and whole-body muscle strength. STS tests are a measure of lower-body physical performance, and also muscle function when using established power equations.

Methods: We investigated the relationship of traditional body composition markers (TBCM), fat free mass, percentage body fat, and fat mass, to handgrip strength (HGS), and 30 sec and 60 sec sit-to-stand tests in 34 apparently healthy women aged 40 to 65 years. Data for HGS was on maximum dominant handgrip strength, and for STS on both number of repetitions and calculated power outputs [1]. Body composition was assessed by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (GE Prodigy), bioelectrical impedance analysis (Tanita MC980), and 3D-optical scanning (Fit 3D Proscanner, 3DS). Outputs were traditional body composition markers, and several novel markers including a body shape index (ABSI), surface-based body shape (SBSI), and phase angle. For analyses, we calculated Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, adjusted for age, height and weight, for body composition outputs against HGS and STS outputs. Equivalence of TBCM between the three body composition techniques were calculated using Bland Altman analysis [2] incorporating replicate data.

Results: For STS testing, DXA performed best in showing the most statistically significant correlations with STS repetitions and power outputs, followed by 3DS and then BIA. All three techniques showed more statistically significant correlations for the 60sec STS rather than the 30 sec STS. For HGS, all three techniques showed statistically significant correlations, with BIA have the highest correlation coefficients. The correlation coefficients for the HGS were generally higher than that for the STS. Novel markers such as ABSI, SBSI, and phase angle performed poorly. Bland Altman analysis showed poor equivalence between the three body composition techniques with respect to TBCMs.

Implications: All three body composition techniques showed statistically significant correlation with all TBCMs and HGS, but not for STS, and more so for 60 sec STS than 30sec STS. Thus, study findings linking TBCM to clinical outcomes by STS may have poor generalizability. The validation methodology of TBCM estimations by the three different techniques vary between techniques [3][4]. The results demonstrate that the relationship between TBCM and physical and functional testing are technique and test dependent. Study limitations include a relatively small and homogenous sample size. More advanced multiple regression will be performed in future analysis.

 

  1. Alcazar J, Losa-Reyna J, Rodriguez-Lopez C, Alfaro-Acha A, Rodriguez-Manas L, Ara I, et al. The sit-to-stand muscle power test: An easy, inexpensive and portable procedure to assess muscle power in older people. Exp Gerontol. 2018;112:38-43.
  2. Bland JM, Altman DG. Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement. Lancet. 1986;1:307-10
  3. Ng BK, Hinton BJ, Fan B, Kanaya AM, Shepherd JA. Clinical anthropometrics and body composition from 3D whole-body surface scans. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2016;70:1265-70
  4. Pietrobelli A, Rubiano F, St-Onge MP, Heymsfield SB. New bioimpedance analysis system: improved phenotyping with whole-body analysis. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004;58:1479-84.