Assessing muscle health in older adults with electrical impedance myography

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sarcopenia, or the deterioration of muscle health with advancing age, is a major public health concern in the developed world. Some of the most important factors underlying the development of sarcopenia are age- relatedchange in muscle composition, including the replacement of muscle fibers by fat and the loss of muscle force production. Declines in muscle composition and muscle force with aging are predictive of incident mobility limitations. Fortunately, both pharmacologic and exercise interventions hold the prospect of forestalling or even reversing this seemingly inexorable process. However, to date, identifying and monitoring these changes in muscle require the use of inconvenient technologies, including quantitative computerized tomography (QCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of muscle to evaluate muscle composition or measures of muscle force production that are either insensitive to small changes or clinically inappropriate for wide use among older adul