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Adiposity and grip strength: a Mendelian randomisation study in UK Biobank

Pinto Pereira, Snehal M; Garfield, Victoria; Farmaki, Aliki-Eleni; Tomlinson, David J; Norris, Thomas; Fatemifar, Ghazaleh; Denaxas, Spiros; ... Cooper, Rachel; + view all (2022) Adiposity and grip strength: a Mendelian randomisation study in UK Biobank. BMC Medicine , 20 , Article 201. 10.1186/s12916-022-02393-2. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Muscle weakness, which increases in prevalence with age, is a major public health concern. Grip strength is commonly used to identify weakness and an improved understanding of its determinants is required. We aimed to investigate if total and central adiposity are causally associated with grip strength. METHODS: Up to 470,786 UK Biobank participants, aged 38-73 years, with baseline data on four adiposity indicators (body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BF%), waist circumference (WC) and waist-hip-ratio (WHR)) and maximum grip strength were included. We examined sex-specific associations between each adiposity indicator and grip strength. We explored whether associations varied by age, by examining age-stratified associations (< 50 years, 50-59 years, 60-64 years,65 years +). Using Mendelian randomisation (MR), we estimated the strength of the adiposity-grip strength associations using genetic instruments for each adiposity trait as our exposure. RESULTS: In males, observed and MR associations were generally consistent: higher BMI and WC were associated with stronger grip; higher BF% and WHR were associated with weaker grip: 1-SD higher BMI was associated with 0.49 kg (95% CI: 0.45 kg, 0.53 kg) stronger grip; 1-SD higher WHR was associated with 0.45 kg (95% CI:0.41 kg, 0.48 kg) weaker grip (covariate adjusted observational analyses). Associations of BMI and WC with grip strength were weaker at older ages: in males aged < 50 years and 65 years + , 1-SD higher BMI was associated with 0.93 kg (95% CI: 0.84 kg, 1.01 kg) and 0.13 kg (95% CI: 0.05 kg, 0.21 kg) stronger grip, respectively. In females, higher BF% was associated with weaker grip and higher WC was associated with stronger grip; other associations were inconsistent. CONCLUSIONS: Using different methods to triangulate evidence, our findings suggest causal links between adiposity and grip strength. Specifically, higher BF% (in both sexes) and WHR (males only) were associated with weaker grip strength.

Type: Article
Title: Adiposity and grip strength: a Mendelian randomisation study in UK Biobank
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s12916-022-02393-2
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-022-02393-2
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci > Department of Targeted Intervention
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine > MRC Unit for Lifelong Hlth and Ageing
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149830
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