The mediating role of sarcopenia in the link between loneliness and frailty among nursing home residents: a cross-sectional study.

Background: The present work focused on investigating the frailty status of older nursing home residents by analyzing the relationships among loneliness, sarcopenia, and frailty. The study explored the mediating effect of sarcopenia on loneliness and frailty among elderly individuals.

Methods: From January to June 2022, 190 elderly individuals were enrolled from four nursing homes in Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhanjiang, and Nanning using a convenience sampling method. A field survey was conducted using a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Frailty Phenotype, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, and the SARC-F screening tool. The data were analyzed with SPSS 25.0 and Process 4.1 software. Normally distributed continuous variables are presented as the means ± standard deviations (Mean±SD) . Associations among loneliness, sarcopenia, and frailty were assessed via Pearson correlation analysis. Moreover, the mediating effect of sarcopenia on loneliness and frailty was examined via linear regression. The bootstrap method in Process 4.1 was employed to test its mediating effect.

Results: The frailty prevalence among elderly nursing home residents was 34.74%. The loneliness score was positively related to the frailty score (r = 0.156, P < 0.05, 95% CI:0.014-0.292), the sarcopenia score was positively related to the frailty score (r = 0.512, P < 0.01, 95% CI:0.399-0.610), and the loneliness score was positively related to the sarcopenia score (r = 0.214, P < 0.01, 95%CI:0.074-0.346). Sarcopenia demonstrated a complete mediating effect on loneliness and frailty among elderly nursing home residents. Sarcopenia typically achieved a mediating effect of 0.107 (95% CI: 0.026-0.197), accounting for 68.59% of the overall effect.

Conclusions: Sarcopenia is a key factor influencing the occurrence of frailty in lonely elderly individuals in nursing homes.