Novel inflammatory-related indices for screening sarcopenia: Insights from a population-based study.

BACKGROUND

The progression of sarcopenia is closely associated with inflammation. However, systematic data is currently limited linking sarcopenia to inflammatory-related indices, especially neutrophil percentage-to-albumin ratio (NPAR).

OBJECTIVE

The study was designed to investigate the correlation between inflammatory-related indices and sarcopenia.

SUBJECTS AND

METHODS

Data on sarcopenia were obtained from the 2011-2018 period of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The correlation between inflammatory-related indices and sarcopenia was investigated by adjusting for confounders using multivariate logistic regression models, restricted cubic splines (RCS) regression, and subgroup analysis. To evaluate prediction performance, we conducted the random forest method and plotted receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The area under the curve (AUC) was applied to gauge accuracy.

RESULTS

After adjusting for confounding variables, a greater incidence of sarcopenia was correlated with increased levels of NPAR and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII). The risk of sarcopenia was higher among individuals in the highest quartile of NPAR (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.17-2.47) and SII (OR = 1.62, 95% CI: 1.11-2.37) than those in the lowest quartiles. Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and SII exhibited a nonlinear association with sarcopenia in the RCS model. The results of the random forest revealed that, among all indexes, NPAR exhibited the highest predictive value for sarcopenia. ROC analysis for the NPAR showed an AUC of 0.784.

CONCLUSION

Inflammatory-related indices have a strong correlation with an increased incidence of sarcopenia in Americans, suggesting that they may be employed to predict sarcopenia in clinical practice. Among those indices, NPAR represents the most promising with the highest predictive performance. More future research should be done to validate its efficiency in clinical practice.