Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences on calcified tissues
Bone Abstracts (2014) 3 PP201 | DOI: 10.1530/boneabs.3.PP201

ECTS2014 Poster Presentations Muscle, physical activity and bone (16 abstracts)

Prevalence of ‘dysmobility syndrome' in community dwelling older adults: findings from the Hertfordshire Cohort Study

Michael Clynes 1 , Mark Edwards 1 , Celia Gregson 2 , Bjoern Buehring 4 , Nicholas Harvey 1 , Elaine Dennison 1 , Neil Binkley 4 & Cyrus Cooper 1,


1MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK; 2Musculoskeletal Research Unit, Avon Orthopaedic Centre, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK; 3NIHR Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; 4University of Wisconsin Osteoporosis Research Program, Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Wisconsin, USA.


Sarcopenia and osteoporosis are common in later life, often coexist, and increase the risk of adverse health outcomes such as disability, falls and fracture. Binkley and colleagues recently devised a score-based system for the diagnosis of ‘dysmobility syndrome’ in an attempt to combine adverse musculoskeletal phenotypes and indentify older individuals at particular risk. We applied these criteria to a larger cohort of participants from the Hertfordshire Cohort Study (HCS) to define dysmobility prevalence in this unselected cohort of UK community dwelling older adults.

Dysmobility syndrome was defined as three or more of low appendicular lean mass ratio, low grip strength, low gait speed, low leg mass:fat mass ratio, osteoporosis, and fall in the last year. Body composition and BMD were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), gait speed was determined by 3 m walk test and grip strength was assessed with a Jamar hand-held dynamometer. Participants completed a questionnaire detailing self-reported falls and fracture history.

Data were available from 156 men and 142 women. The mean age of participants was 76.1 (S.D. 2.56) years with a mean BMI of 27.4 (S.D. 4.08) kg/m2. The prevalence of sarcopenia in this cohort was 7 and 8.3% using the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP) and International Working Group on Sarcopenia (international) definitions respectively. Dysmobility syndrome was more common in women than in men (33.10 and 17.31% respectively, P<0.05). While dysmobility was more prevalent in overweight or obese subjects than normal weight individuals, these trends were statistically non-significant. As expected those with dysmobility reported significantly higher number of falls (last year and ever) (P<0.01) than counterparts without dysmobility, but no increased fracture rate was observed in the dysmobility group (P=0.96).

Dysmobility syndrome is common in UK community dwelling older individuals, with higher rates observed in women than men.

Volume 3

European Calcified Tissue Society Congress 2014

Prague, Czech Republic
17 May 2014 - 20 May 2014

European Calcified Tissue Society 

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