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. 2023 Jul 4:18:1021-1035.
doi: 10.2147/CIA.S407917. eCollection 2023.

Prevalence of Sarcopenia in Africa: A Systematic Review

Bryan Vincent Mballa Yene  1 , Sang-Yeob Lee  2 , Ki-Soo Park  3 , Yang Jae Kang  4 , Sung Hyo Seo  2 , Jun-Il Yoo  5
Affiliations

Prevalence of Sarcopenia in Africa: A Systematic Review

Bryan Vincent Mballa Yene et al. Clin Interv Aging. .

Abstract

Objective: The world population gradually getting older, age-related sarcopenia is becoming more frequent. Known to be highly prevalent in high income countries, relative data in Africa are still scarce. This review aims to estimate the prevalence of sarcopenia in Africa and its characteristics.

Study design and setting: A literature search in PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus was conducted in October 2022. All studies reporting the prevalence of sarcopenia in Africa within 15 years were included, and we did an assessment of bias with Hoy et al's risk bias assessment tool. The estimated prevalence of sarcopenia was the outcome and we performed secondary analyses by age, gender, and diagnostic criteria. The random effect model was used for the prevalence estimation. The prevalence of sarcopenia and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were calculated using the inverse-variance method.

Results: A total of 17 studies met our eligibility criteria, for a study population of 12,690 participants with 44.3% males and 55.7% females. The overall prevalence of sarcopenia was 25% (95% CI: 19-30%). The prevalence of sarcopenia among 50 years old and older was 23% (95% CI: 17-29%). We had a higher prevalence of sarcopenia among males (30%, %95 IC: 20-39%) than females (29%, %95 IC: 21-36%). The prevalence of sarcopenia was different depending on the diagnosis criteria used.

Conclusion: The prevalence of sarcopenia in Africa was relatively high. However, the fact that the majority of included studies were hospital-based studies shows the necessity of further community-based studies in order to have a more accurate representation of the situation in the general population.

Keywords: Africa; meta-analysis; prevalence; sarcopenia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flowchart presenting the summary of searches carried out in the literature.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of the prevalence of sarcopenia.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Subgroup analysis of the prevalence of sarcopenia by age.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Subgroup analysis of the prevalence of sarcopenia by gender.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Subgroup analysis of the prevalence of sarcopenia by diagnostic criteria.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Sensitivity analysis. formula image: “prevalence estimate” containing effect size and 95% confidence interval.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Begg’s Funnel plot.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Egger’s test.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Trimmed and filled funnel plot.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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