Sarcopenia in Physical Frailty

A context that is overall featuring social and economic changes, improvement in technology, progress in medicine, and better public health care is favorable to a worldwide increase in the elderly population aged over 65 years (Christensen et al., 2009). Prevention in the case of disability proves essential as aging could lead to permanent incapacities (Morley, 2012). Medical care, in particular, and healthcare systems at large are more and more on the alert: they are requested to find the proper solutions and decide on the most efficient answers to the damaging effects of aging. Both sarcopenia (Janssen et al., 2000) and frailty (Clegg et al., 2013), which are quite frequent among the elderly, require specific attention (Cesari et al., 2014). Both are at times linked to health problems (Vetrano et al., 2014) that can possibly be reversible and dealt with via clinical practices (Vellas et al., 2013). Hence, this review will focus on the characterization of sarcopenia in the context of physical frailty (PF).