AMRA Medical identified a muscle composition phenotype associated with all-cause mortality using MRI and will present this research at SCWD International Conference
LINKÖPING, Sweden; December 11, 2020 — AMRA’s abstract titled “Cut-points for adverse muscle composition predicts all-cause mortality” was accepted for e-poster and virtual presentation at the Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Wasting Disorders‘ virtual conference, scheduled for 11-13 December 2020. The abstract highlights how AMRA employed its magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol for muscle composition profiling to assess mortality risk using death data from the UK Biobank. The researchers found that adverse muscle composition was significantly associated with death, more so than cancer and smoking, and suggest that cut-points for muscle fat could strengthen sarcopenia guidelines.
The researchers analyzed MRI images of 24,848 individuals within the UK Biobank for thigh fat-free muscle volume (FFMV) and muscle fat infiltration (MFI). Each individual was assigned a sex- and BMI-invariant FFMV z-score and categorized into one of four muscle composition groups: (1) adverse – low FFMV and high MFI, (2) low fat-free muscle volume only (z-score), (3) high muscle fat infiltration only, and (4) normal muscle composition. The 25th percentile was used as a cut-point to define low FFMV and the 75th percentile to define high MFI.
The participants were followed for (a mean of) 3.6 years after imaging and 256 deaths were recorded. While low FFMV z-score only (group 2) and high MFI only (group 3) were significantly associated with mortality, adverse muscle composition (group 1) was most strongly associated with death, revealing a 3.9-fold higher risk compared to normal muscle composition. Notably, the researchers detected adverse muscle composition in 10.3% of the participants, demonstrating that this study’s highest predictor of mortality was also highly prevalent. Adverse muscle composition and high muscle fat infiltration remained significantly associated with mortality after adjusting for sex, age, BMI, smoking, and cancer diagnosis, leading the authors to suggest that MRI-based muscle composition thresholds could be used to improve sarcopenia guidelines.
View the poster number 4-20 and attend the presentation during the Poster Session 8 on Sunday, December 13th between 7:55 pm and 8:45 pm CET and learn more about AMRA’s methods on the Solutions page.
