Transdisciplinary Approach for Sarcopenia. Clinical significance of sarcopenia in the patients with chronic liver disease

Recently, many studies of the patients with chronic liver disease have focused on sarcopenia. In the patients with chronic liver disease, sarcopenia occurs, because of advanced liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) . In both diseases, sarcopenia is an important prognostic factor. Thus, sarcopenia has been reported to be a predictor for recurrence of HCC and early mortality after liver transplantation. In the patients with HCC, the mechanism of sarcopenia is unknown. In the patients with endostea liver failure, muscle compensates energy breakdown of the liver and muscle atrophy occurs. Further research is necessary to clarify whether nutritional support and muscle training prevent from sarcopenia and as a result, improve survival of the patients with chronic liver disease.