Obesity Abstracts

Sarcopenic obesity (SO) represents a new challenge due to the parallel increase of obesity and life expectancy. In fact the excess of fat mass and the decrease in muscle mass that characterise SO are frequent during the ageing process due, in particular to gender, degree of adiposity, diseases-related alterations, and age-related hormonal changes. At the moment a universal consensus for its diagnosis does not exist and different procedures, parameters and cut-off points have been proposed in the literature to define it. Moreover SO represents also a difficult challenge with regard to treatment. Reducing fat mass with recovery or at least maintaining lean mass, which would be the logical targets of therapeutic intervention in the SO, are difficult to achieve. Both obesity and sarcopenia are associated with the reduction of muscle strength and the impairment of physical performance and therefore to the onset of disability. Furthermore sarcopenia and obesity are both characterised by metabolic aspects related to insulin resistance and inflammation in particular. SO is more strictly associated to CVD risk factors (e.g. arterial hypertension, carotid arteria intima-media thickness, lipid profile, insulin resistance) when compared with either obesity or sarcopenia. However the studies that investigated the association of SO with known cardiometabolic and/or cardiovascular risk factors, described controversial results depending on the considered population and the criteria used for the definition of SO. There is an unclear evidence on the association between SO and mortality, and data from different studies reach diverse

Conclusions: while in some studies SO seems not to confer any greater risk than sarcopenia alone in other studies the combination of (abdominal) obesity and sarcopenia was associated with the highest risk of mortality. The aims of this presentation are to critically appraise the evidence on approaches to diagnose SO and implications for risk prediction and treatment.