Evaluating the muscular strength, functional capacity, and risk of sarcopenia in elderly women who practice Mat Pilates

Abstract

Introduction: Despite the importance of appropriate levels of muscular strength to maintain the functional capacity and a healthy life in old age, the current literature still lacks studies that investigate the profile of elderly women who practice Mat Pilates regarding these variables. Objective: This study aimed to analyze muscular strength, functional capacity, and risk of sarcopenia in elderly women who practiced Mat Pilates. Method: This is a cross-sectional study carried out with 50 elderly women who practice Mat Pilates in the city of Maringá, Paraná. Sociodemographic and health questionnaires were used, in addition to tests created by a Latin American development group for maturity called Grupo de Desenvolvimento Latino Americano para a Maturidade (GDLAM), sitting-rising test, arm curl test, and SARC-F questionnaire. For data analysis, Shapiro-Wilk and Mann-Whitney U tests, as well as Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficients, were used. The level of significance was p < 0.05. Results: The 70-79-year-old elderly women showed worse results in the functional capacity and muscular strength tests of the upper limbs and a higher risk of sarcopenia than the individuals who were under 70 years of age. Muscular strength was inversely related to the reduction of the risk of sarcopenia, and functional capacity was directly associated with this risk. Conclusion: A good functional capacity seems to be related to the reduction of the risk of sarcopenia. Age seems to be an intervening factor for reducing muscular strength levels and functional capacity and increasing the risk of sarcopenia.

Predictors and short‐term outcomes of post‐stroke fatigue in initial phase of transition from hospital to home: A prospective observational study

“…Moreover poor functional ability related to higher levels of PSF, and functional status was reported to mediate the influence of PSF on HRQOL (Vincent‐Onabajo & Adamu, 2014). Furthermore, poor functional capacity seems to be related to the increase of the risk of sarcopenia and reduced muscle strength can also leads to loss of functional capacity (Dhillon & Hasni, 2017; Oliveira et al., 2019). Despite some studies having shown a strong association between low skeletal muscle mass and fatigue in cancer patients (Bye et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2020), to our best knowledge, muscle loss or sarcopenia was not considered in previous studies on PSF.…”