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Depressive symptoms linked to disability in older Chinese adults

Adults with depressive symptoms and low muscle strength and mass had a disability hazard ratio—comparing rates over time—of 1.40 versus those with neither.

Paper by Xin Liao, Bingyao Liu, Song Yu, Bin Guo, Ke Yu
Figure 1. Incidence of ADL disability (a) and all-cause mortality (b) across the four exposure groups defined by depression and sarcopenia status.
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Figure 1. Incidence of ADL disability (a) and all-cause mortality (b) across the four exposure groups defined by depression and sarcopenia status.Incidence of ADL disability (a) and all-cause mortality (b) across the four exposure groups defined by depression and sarcopenia status.Liao et al.
Preprint: cohort study of 4,161 peoplePopulations

7 years

Paper
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An observational cohort study followed 4,161 community-dwelling Chinese adults aged 60 or older who initially had no disability in basic daily activities. Researchers identified depressive symptoms using a questionnaire. They assessed sarcopenia, a condition involving low muscle strength and mass, using grip strength, walking speed and estimated limb muscle mass.

Over a median seven years, 1,651 participants developed disability in daily activities. Compared with neither condition, adjusted disability hazard ratios were 1.37 for depressive symptoms alone and 1.40 for both conditions. The association for both conditions was strongest among adults aged 60–69. Sarcopenia alone showed no clear association with disability. For mortality, the ranges of likely effects for all three groups included no difference. Low grip strength was independently linked to higher mortality, unlike the overall sarcopenia diagnosis.

Why it matters

Losing independence is a concern in later life. The authors suggested that adults aged 60–69 with both conditions may benefit from combined screening and early intervention.

Caveats

This observational study cannot establish cause and effect; depressive symptoms came from a questionnaire and muscle mass was estimated. The paper is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed.

From the paper

Participants

We included 4,161 community-dwelling adults aged ≥ 60 years from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011–2018) who were free of activities of daily living (ADL) disability at baseline.

Methods

Follow-up

Over a median follow-up of 7.0 years, 1,651 (39.7%) participants developed ADL disability and 521 (12.5%) died.

Results

Result

Compared with the no depression/no sarcopenia group, the fully adjusted HRs for ADL disability were 1.01 (95% CI 0.87–1.18) for sarcopenia only, 1.37 (1.23–1.53) for depression only, and 1.40 (1.15–1.70) for depression plus sarcopenia.

Results

Quoted word for word from the full text on researchsquare.com.

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