Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 6 pp 9135—9142
Consumption of chilies and sweet peppers is associated with lower risk of sarcopenia in older adults
- 1 Nutritional Epidemiology Institute and School of Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
- 2 College of Pharmacy, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
- 3 Department of Toxicology and Sanitary Chemistry, School of Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
- 4 Department of Nutrition, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
- 5 Health Management Centre, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 6 Institute of Radiation Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin, China
- 7 Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environment, Nutrition and Public Health, Tianjin, China
- 8 Center for International Collaborative Research on Environment, Nutrition and Public Health, Tianjin, China
Received: February 15, 2020 Accepted: September 24, 2020 Published: March 26, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.104168How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: Sarcopenia is an aging-related loss of muscle mass and function, which induces numerous adverse outcomes. Capsaicin and capsiate, separately extracted from chilies and sweet peppers, have the potential to induce muscle hypertrophy via activation of transient receptor potential vanilloid 1. The present study aimed to investigate whether chili and sweet pepper consumption are related to sarcopenia in the elderly general population.
Methods: A cross-sectional study with 2,451 participants was performed. Dietary chili and sweet pepper consumption were assessed using a validated self-administered food frequency questionnaire. Sarcopenia was defined according to the consensus of the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia. Logistic regressions were performed to measure the effect of chili and sweet pepper consumption on sarcopenia.
Results: The prevalence of sarcopenia was 16.1%. After adjustment for potential confounding variables, the odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for sarcopenia across chili and sweet pepper consumption categories were 1.00 (reference) for almost never, 0.73 (0.55, 0.97) and 0.73 (0.56, 0.96) for ≤1 time/week, 0.60 (0.39, 0.90) and 0.66 (0.45, 0.95) for ≥2-3 times/week (both P for trend <0.01), respectively.
Conclusion: The present study showed that higher consumption of chilies and sweet peppers was related to a lower risk of sarcopenia in older adults.
Abbreviations
TRPV1: transient receptor potential vanilloid 1; mTOR: mammalian target of rapamycin; TCLSIH: Tianjin Chronic Low-grade Systemic Inflammation and Health; FFQ: food frequency questionnaire; WDR: weighed diet record; AWGS: Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia; RASM: relative appendicular skeletal muscle mass; BMI: body mass index; CI: confidence interval; ORs: odds ratios; PGC-1α: peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γcoactivator-1α.