April 5, 2017
A simple test to determine grip strength may help identify adults at risk of developing diabetes in middle age, says a study that found an association between weak grip and metabolic disease and disability in adults.
Low grip strength was greatly associated with both cardiometabolic diseases and physical disabilities in middle-age to older adults, both men and women, the findings, published in the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Medical Sciences, showed.
"We wanted to examine grip strength in particular because it is highly associated with overall body strength," said lead study author Mark Peterson, IHPI member and Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at U-M.
"To asses someone's grip strength using a handgrip dynamometer takes less than 10 seconds, which makes it extremely attractive to adopt in a clinical or community setting at the population level," Peterson said.
The research team analysed normalised grip strength for 4,544 US and 6,030 Chinese study participants 50 years of age and older.