Polypharmacy and sarcopenia in hospitalized older patients: results of the GLISTEN study

BackgroundRecently the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) showed that polypharmacy is associated with clinically relevant sarcopenia among community-dwelling older persons. Here we report findings from the GLISTEN study about the association of polypharmacy with sarcopenia among older medical in-patients.MethodsThe GLISTEN study investigated prevalence and clinical correlates of sarcopenia in older patients admitted to geriatric and internal medicine acute care wards of 12 Italian hospitals.ResultsIn this sample of older medical in-patients with high prevalence of sarcopenia (34.7%) and polypharmacy (70.2%) we did not observe a significant association of polypharmacy with sarcopenia.ConclusionsPresent findings demonstrate that the association of polypharmacy with sarcopenia, observed in the BASE-II study, is not evident in the GLISTEN sample, being our patients significantly older, more multi-morbid, with high prevalence of sarcopenia and polypharmacy, suggesting that this association might vary according to the heterogeneous health, functional, and nutritional characteristics of older people.