UC Irvine

Background and objectives

Maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients with larger body or fat mass have greater survival than normal to low mass. We hypothesized that mid-arm muscle circumference (MAMC), a conveniently measured surrogate of lean body mass (LBM), has stronger association with clinical outcomes than triceps skinfold (TSF), a surrogate of fat mass.

Design, settings, participants, & measurements

The associations of TSF, MAMC, and serum creatinine, another LBM surrogate, with baseline short form 36 quality-of-life scores and 5-year survival were examined in 792 MHD patients. In a randomly selected subsample of 118 subjects, LBM was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry.

Results

Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry-assessed LBM correlated most strongly with MAMC and serum creatinine. Higher MAMC was associated with better short form 36 mental health scale and lower death hazard ratios (HRs) after adjustment for case-mix, malnutrition-inflammation-cachexia syndrome, and inflammatory markers. Adjusted death HRs were 1.00, 0.86, 0.69, and 0.63 for the first to fourth MAMC quartiles, respectively. Higher serum creatinine and TSF were also associated with lower death HRs, but these associations were mitigated after multivariate adjustments. Using median values of TSF and MAMC to dichotomize, combined high MAMC with either high or low TSF (compared with low MAMC/TSF) exhibited the greatest survival, i.e., death HRs of 0.52 and 0.59, respectively.

Conclusions

Higher MAMC is a surrogate of larger LBM and an independent predictor of better mental health and greater survival in MHD patients. Sarcopenia-correcting interventions to improve clinical outcomes in this patient population warrant controlled trials.