Heart Failure and Sarcopenia: What is in between?

Heart failure (HF) is a progressive and lethal disease if not treated correctly.Patients with severe HF often progress to a state of cachexia and loss of muscle strength called sarcopenia. ^– Sarcopenia and cachexia are not exactly the same thing. According to the European Consensus, cachexia is characterized as severe body weight, fat, muscle loss, and increased protein catabolism.On the other hand, the term sarcopenia is defined as age-related loss of skeletal muscle and a decline in muscle strength and/or physical performance, not necessarily associated with weight loss.

Although widely overlapping and sometimes difficult to recognize, these two conditions are highly prevalent in patients with severe HF. In the Studies Investigating Comorbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA-HF), which analyzed 200 patients with either reduced (69% of the cases) or preserved ejection fraction, 32% had muscle wasting. Of these, 30 (14.4%) presented with sarcopenia alone, 25 (12%) with cachexia alone, and 14 (6.7%) with sarcopenia and cachexia together.

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