Physical Frailty and Sarcopenia: Development of a Framework for Supporting Interventions Against Incident Mobility Disability

Cesari, Matteo

Abstract

In 2014, the Innovative Medicines Initiative funded a 48-million Euros project entitled "Sarcopenia and Physical fRailty IN older people: multi-componenT Treatment strategies" (SPRINTT). The SPRINTT consortium federates partners from academia, industry, and the private sector to address an important gap in the geriatric field: the lack of a standardized and clinically relevant definition of sarcopenia. In particular, the SPRINTT project aims to involve all major stakeholders in the framing of a skeletal muscle-specific risk profile that exposes the individual at risk of negative health-related outcomes (in particular, disability), is amenable to benefiting from preventive interventions, and meets the standards requested by regulatory agencies. During the first year of activity, the SPRINTT consortium has implemented a "Physical Frailty & Sarcopenia" (PF&S) condition that considers existing evidence and regularly exchanges information with the European Medicines Agency. This condition is currently the study objective of a 3-year randomized controlled trial in multiple countries across Europe. The trial aims to verify whether a multicomponent intervention (based on physical activity and nutritional counseling) can prevent the onset of mobility disabilities in community-dwelling older persons with PF&S. The present article provides an overview of the SPRINTT background and rationale and explains the details of the PF&S condition.