The Aging in Motion Coalition was featured in MedPageToday’s online resource article, “Sarcopenia: Muscle Weakness Creeps Up With Age.”
The article provides more information on sarcopenia for medical experts, a condition where low muscle mass combined with muscle weakness causes limits in movement that affect function.
AIM’s Executive Director Cynthia A. Bens discusses the need for treatment guidelines for sarcopenia, telling MedPageToday that “cut-points and other criteria for the development of clinical guidelines” are being established by the Foundation for National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Sarcopenia Project and the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People.
The article also looks at AIM’s request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a new ICD-10-CM code for sarcopenia, that will take effect October 1, 2016. The code will allow for separate reporting and data collection for sarcopenia.
“The [new] code will allow us to better characterize the affected population,” Bens says. “Doing so can open the door to discoveries on new risk factors and methods of treatment. In addition, we believe that more accurate identification and diagnosis of sarcopenia will help distinguish those who have the condition from those individuals who experience normal amounts of age-related muscle loss that doesn’t result in weakness or decline.”
Roger Fielding, Ph.D., senior scientist and director of the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory, Jean Mayer, USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, and a member of the AIM Science Advisory Board, were also quoted in the story.
AIM presented a June webinar on “Sarcopenia Cut-Points,” featuring experts that highlighted how national and international leaders are making efforts to reach an agreement on appropriate cut-points for sarcopenia. The webinar is available online.
