The Relationship Between Hand Grip Strength, Malnutrition Risk, and Cognitive Decline in Persons Referred to a Specialist Memory Clinic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cognitive changes are a normal part of aging, but if those cognitive changes exceed what is expected then one may receive a diagnosis of cognitive impairment. People with cognitive impairment are at a higher risk for malnutrition than the rest of the population, and people who are malnourished are at a higher risk for symptoms of cognitive impairment. Assessment for malnutrition and cognitive impairment can both be time consuming and difficult processes that require highly trained practitioners to complete. Hand grip strength assessment is a simple process and is measured with a dynamometer. A decrease in grip strength is associated with both malnutrition and cognitive impairment. There have been studies examining malnutrition risk, cognitive impairment, and hand grip strength separately, however, there is currently no literature exploring associations between these variables in a memory clinic population. This study aims to address this gap in the literature.\nThis study was completed using data from the longitudinal database from the Rural and Remote Memory Clinic (RRMC), a specialist clinic that provides interdisciplinary care to patients who live in rural or remote areas of Saskatchewan. The SCREEN© (Seniors in the Community Risk Evaluation for Eating and Nutrition), a validated measure of nutritional risk in community dwelling older adults, was used to assess malnutrition risk. Cognitive function was measured with the MMSE (Mini Mental State Exam), a measure of cognitive function; the CDRSOB (Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes), which measures dementia severity; and RRMC diagnosis status. A dynamometer was used to measure grip strength. These variables were measured with descriptive analyses and compared with correlational analyses, linear regressions, and logistic regressions.\nResults indicated that only 10% of participants are not at risk for malnutrition. Results also indicate that as malnutrition risk improves, cognitive function decreases. Associations between malnutrition risk and hand grip strength, and hand grip strength and cognitive function were not statistically significant. However, literature on the topic suggests that relationships do exist between these variables. Therefore, it is recommended that this study be replicated in the future with a larger sample size and over a longer time period. If these relationships persist in future studies in memory clinic populations, then perhaps hand grip strength could be measured frequently in memory clinic settings to easily detect any changes in cognitive function or malnutrition risk, and allow practitioners to provide treatments and interventions.
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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 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".