Keywords:
Musculoskeletal soft tissue, Absorptiometry / Bone densitometry, Experimental investigations, Laboratory tests, Statistics, Geriatrics, Inflammation
Authors:
A. Bazzocchi, C. Gasperini, A. Santoro, T. Tavella, S. Rampelli, C. Fabbri, G. Guidarelli, D. Mercatelli, E. Giampieri; Bologna/IT
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-3317
Methods and materials
The “New dietary strategies addressing the specific needs of elderly population for a healthy ageing in Europe” (NU-AGE,
http://www.nu-age.eu/) is a large consortium with 30 partners,
from 16 EU countries,
aiming at studying the effect of an elderly-tailored Mediterranean diet by enrolling healthy volunteers of 65 years of age and over in a one year randomized,
multicenter,
single-blind,
controlled trial with two parallel groups (i.e.,
dietary intervention and control) (clinicaltrial.gov: NCT01754012) [10].
In the present framework of the NU-AGE study,
a cross-sectional analysis of BC and gut microbiota of 271 sex-balanced volunteers enrolled in the Italian cohort,
aged 65-79 years,
was performed.
Whole-body DXA scans were acquired and faecal samples were collected in 201 of the participants at baseline.
Pre-frail subjects were identified as defined by the presence of 1 or 2 out of the 5 frailty criteria proposed by Fried et al.,
[2].
DXA regions of interest were defined by the analytical program including six different corporeal districts: total body,
trunk,
upper limbs,
lower limbs,
android region (a portion of the abdomen included between the line joining the two superior iliac crests and extended cranially up to the 20% of the distance between this line and the chin),
and gynoid region (a portion of legs from the femoral great trochanter,
directed caudally up to a distance double of the android region).
The visceral fat analysis was performed by CoreScan [11].
The taxonomic characterization of the gut microbiota was performed using 16S rRNA sequencing (V3 and V4 regions).
We evaluated the difference in species composition among the samples (beta diversity) through Principal Coordinates Analysis based on unweighted Unifrac distance matrix.
Associations between BC parameters and gut microbiota were tested.
Data were analyzed by Kruskal - Wallis and ANOVA followed by Tukey post hoc test.