Motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome is originally defined as the presence of subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) and slow gait (SG). MCR is well known to be useful for predicting adverse health outcomes, including falls and dementia. However, around four out of five older Korean adults reported SCCs, thereby, it may not be discriminative to define MCR in Korea. We adopted the three-item recall (3IR) test, instead of SCCs, to define MCR. This cross-sectional analysis included 2133 community-dwelling older adults aged 70–84 years, without dementia or any dependence in activities of daily living from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study. The newly attempted criteria of MCR using 3IR were met by 105 participants (4.9%). MCR using 3IR showed synergistic effects on fall-related outcomes, whereas the conventional definition of MCR using SCCs was not superior to SG only. MCR using 3IR was associated with falls (odds ratio [OR]: 1.92; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16–3.16), recurrent falls (OR: 2.19; 95% CI: 1.12–4.32), falls with injury (OR: 1.98; 95% CI: 1.22–3.22), falls with fracture (OR: 2.51; 95% CI: 1.09–5.79), fear of falling (OR: 3.00; 95% CI: 1.83–4.92), and low activities-specific balance confidence (OR: 3.13; 95% CI: 1.57–6.25). We found that MCR using 3IR could be useful in predicting fall-related outcomes in a cultural background reporting more SCCs, such as Korea.
Sarcopenia is common among older individuals and has adverse health outcomes. However, little is known about its association with neighborhood environmental factors. We explored the relationship between sarcopenia and neighborhood environmental factors among community-dwelling older adults aged 70–84 years in urban areas in the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study. There were 1,776 participants in this cross-sectional study (mean age 75.9±3.8 years, 54.1% women). Sarcopenia was defined using the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia guidelines. The neighborhood environmental factors were assessed using the 17-item Environmental Module of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ-E). The prevalence of sarcopenia was 22.5%. In the multivariate analysis adjusted for potential confounders, compared to the 5th quintile of the IPAQ-E score, the odds ratio (OR and 95% confidence interval [CI]) for sarcopenia in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th quintile were 2.14 (1.41-3.26), 1.70 (1.11-2.61), 1.76 (1.16-2.68) and 1.62 (1.07-2.47), respectively. Sarcopenia was associated with environmental factors including access to destinations (β = -0.015) and neighborhood safety (β = -0.008) (all p<0.05). Furthermore, no access to public transportation (OR 2.05, 95% CI 1.20-3.50), poor access to recreational facilities (OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.02-1.92), no presence of destination (OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.07-2.21), hill hazard (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.02-1.77), and lack of safety from traffic (OR 1.35, 95% CI 1.02-1.79) was associated with an increased risk of sarcopenia. Our study suggests that neighborhood environmental characteristics are associated with sarcopenia and better neighborhood environmental strategies can help prevent sarcopenia among older adults.
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