Handgrip Strength Asymmetry Is Associated With Health-Related Quality Of Life Among Canadian Adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Health-related quality of life (HRQOL), a measure of perceived quality of health, is significantly related to current and future health. Handgrip strength (HGS) asymmetry is an aspect of muscle function that can be assessed using a hand dynamometry. While several studies have found relationships between HGS asymmetry and HRQOL, few have used nationally representative data, and none have used Canadian data. PURPOSE: To examine the association between HGS asymmetry and HRQOL in a nationally representative sample of Canadian adults. METHODS: A secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from cycles 5 (2016-17) and 6 (2018-19) of the Canadian Health Measure Survey was performed for adults aged 18-79 years. HGS asymmetry was calculated as the ratio between the maximum HGS scores for the strongest and weakest hands. HRQOL was measured using the Health Utility Index. Crude and covariate-adjusted logistic regression models were used to quantify the relationships between HGS asymmetry and HRQOL. The adjusted models included age, sex, race, marital status, education level, BMI, self-reported general health, and self-reported mental health as covariates. SAS (v9.4, SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA) was used for all analyses. RESULTS: We found that HGS asymmetry was significantly associated with poor HRQOL in Canadian adults. Relative to individuals without asymmetry, adults with ≥21% asymmetry had 1.80 (95%CI: 1.26–2.56) greater odds for poor overall HRQOL after adjustment for covariates. In addition, adults with ≥21% HGS asymmetry had 3.29 (95%CI: 1.37–7.91) greater odds for poor mobility. CONCLUSIONS: We found that HGS asymmetry was associated with poor HRQOL among Canadian adults. Our findings suggest that HGS asymmetry can help with clinical screening, and it could potentially help inform appropriate referrals that may decelerate the loss of physical function. Hand dynamometers are an acceptable and feasible tool to assess bilateral strength asymmetry, which should be included as a standard part of clinical practice and continue to be used in population health surveillance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".