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. 2022 Feb 17:2022:3142307.
doi: 10.1155/2022/3142307. eCollection 2022.

Long-Term Changes in Sarcopenia and Body Composition in Diabetes Patients with and without Charcot Osteoarthropathy

Michael Zaucha Sørensen  1 , Rasmus Bo Jansen  1 , Tomas Møller Christensen  1 , Per E Holstein  2 , Ole Lander Svendsen  1
Affiliations

Long-Term Changes in Sarcopenia and Body Composition in Diabetes Patients with and without Charcot Osteoarthropathy

Michael Zaucha Sørensen et al. J Diabetes Res. .

Abstract

Background: Charcot osteoarthropathy of the foot (COA) can currently only be treated using prolonged periods of immobilization of the affected extremity. Therefore, the hypothesis is that COA leads to altered body composition and increased sarcopenia.

Objective: To investigate the changes over several years in sarcopenia, body composition, and fat distribution in diabetes patients with previous COA compared to diabetes patients without previous COA.

Methods: Prospective observational clinical study. Twenty-one subjects were included and had two DXA scans done with mean 8.6-year intervals to compare changes in lean mass and fat distribution. The lean mass of limbs was used as an estimate of appendicular lean mass (aLM). Fat mass and aLM were then used to detect sarcopenic individuals using different methods. Results and Conclusions. As compared to baseline, both groups had significant loss of lean mass, and diabetics without COA had significant gain of total fat percentage. No statistically different prevalence of sarcopenia between the groups could be established. Likewise, no difference was found in total lean and fat mass changes. None of the groups had statistically significant changes of android fat distribution. As compared with published data on sarcopenia, people with diabetes might be more prone to sarcopenia than healthy individuals.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Changes in fat distribution: individual changes in body fat (defined as percentage of total soft tissue mass) and truncal fat (defined as percentage of total fat mass) from baseline to follow-up after 8.6 years, in diabetes patients without (DM-COA) or with (DM+COA) a previous Charcot foot. ∗: significant increase from baseline (p = 0.01). Otherwise, there were no significant changes from baseline or changes between DM-COA and DM+COA (p > 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Changes in muscle mass using different methods: Individual changes in measures of appendicular muscle mass and sarcopenia from baseline to follow-up after 8.6 years in diabetes patients without (DM-COA) or with (DM+COA) a previous Charcot foot. (a) Shows aLM/h2 results expressed as individual aLM/h2 values minus reference cut-off values for sarcopenia, and (b) shows residual results using the same method. A value less than 0 is therefore below cut-off and indicates sarcopenia. There were no significant changes from baseline to follow-up within or between the groups (p > 0.05).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Sarcopenia prevalence using different methods: prevalence of sarcopenia shown using different methods at baseline and at follow-up after 8.6 years in diabetes patients without (DM-COA) or with (DM+COA) a previous Charcot foot. “Both” methods indicate sarcopenia detected using any of the aLM/h2 of residual methods. There were no significant differences in the prevalence of sarcopenia between the groups (p > 0.05).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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