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Assessment of the performance of the SarQoL® questionnaire in screening for sarcopenia in older people

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Abstract

Background

Because of its low prevalence and the need for physical tests to establish a diagnosis, recruiting sarcopenic people for clinical studies can be a resource-intensive process.

Aims

We investigated whether the SarQoL®, a 55-item questionnaire designed to measure quality of life in sarcopenia, could be used to identify older people with a high likelihood of being sarcopenic, and to compare its performance to the SARC-F tool.

Methods

We performed a secondary analysis of data from older, community-dwelling participants of the SarcoPhAge study, evaluated for sarcopenia according to the EWGSOP2 criteria, and who completed the SarQoL® and SARC-F questionnaires. We determined the optimal threshold to distinguish between sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic people with the Youden index. Screening performance was evaluated with the area under the curve (AUC) and by calculating sensitivity and specificity.

Results

The analysis of 309 participants provided an optimal threshold value of ≤ 52.4 points for identifying people with sarcopenia with the SarQoL® questionnaire, which resulted in a sensitivity of 64.7% (41.1–84.2%), a specificity of 80.5% (75.7–84.7%) and an AUC of 0.771 (0.652–0.889). Compared to the SARC-F, the SarQoL® has greater sensitivity (64.7% vs 52.39%), but slightly lower specificity (80.5% vs. 86.6%).

Discussion

The SarQoL® questionnaire showed acceptable screening accuracy, on par with the SARC-F. The optimal threshold of ≤ 52.4 points should be confirmed in other cohorts of older people.

Conclusions

This exploratory study showed that the SarQoL® could potentially be applied in a screening strategy, with the added benefit of providing a measure of QoL at the same time.

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Availability of data and material

Data are available as a supplementary file.

Code availability

No specific code was written for this study.

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Funding

AG is supported by a FRIA doctoral grant from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S-FNRS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Public Health, Epidemiology and Health Economics, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Public Health Aspects of Musculoskeletal Health and Ageing, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Anton Geerinck, Charlotte Beaudart, Médéa Locquet, Jean-Yves Reginster & Olivier Bruyère

  2. Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA

    Bess Dawson-Hughes

  3. Chair for Biomarkers of Chronic Diseases, Biochemistry Department, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Jean-Yves Reginster

  4. Department of Sport Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Olivier Bruyère

  5. Physical, Rehabilitation Medicine and Sports Traumatology, SportS2, University Hospital of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Olivier Bruyère

Authors
  1. Anton Geerinck
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  2. Bess Dawson-Hughes
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  3. Charlotte Beaudart
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  4. Médéa Locquet
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  5. Jean-Yves Reginster
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  6. Olivier Bruyère
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Contributions

AG, CB, OB and J-YR designed the study. ML and CB collected the data. AG performed the analysis and wrote the manuscript. All authors provided feedback on the manuscript and analyses and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anton Geerinck.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

CB, J-YR and OB are shareholders of SarQoL sprl. AG, BD-H and ML report no conflicts of interest related to this work.

Ethical approval

The SarcoPhAge study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University Teaching Hospital of Liège (n° 2012-277). Because this is a secondary analysis of previously collected data, no additional approval was sought for this specific analysis.

Statement of human and animal rights

This study was approved by the ethical committee of the University Hospital of Liège and complied with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Written consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Consent to participate

All participants provided written informed consent.

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Not applicable.

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Geerinck, A., Dawson-Hughes, B., Beaudart, C. et al. Assessment of the performance of the SarQoL® questionnaire in screening for sarcopenia in older people. Aging Clin Exp Res 33, 2149–2155 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01913-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01913-z

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