Machine Learning for Sarcopenia Prediction in the Elderly Using Socioeconomic, Infrastructure, and Quality-of-Life Data

Since the WHO’s 2021 aging redefinition emphasizes “healthy aging” by focusing on the elderly’s ability to perform daily activities, sarcopenia, which is defined as the loss of skeletal muscle mass, is now becoming a critical health concern, especially in South Korea with a rapidly aging population. Therefore, we develop a prediction model for sarcopenia by using machine learning (ML) techniques based on the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) data 2008–2011, in which we focus on the role of socioeconomic status (SES), social infrastructure, and quality of life (QoL) in the prevalence of sarcopenia. We successfully identify sarcopenia with approximately 80% accuracy by using random forest (RF) and LightGBM (LGB), CatBoost (CAT), and a deep neural network (DNN). For prediction reliability, we achieve area under curve (AUC) values of 0.831, 0.868, and 0.773 for both genders, males, and females, respectively. Especially when using only male data, all the models consistently exhibit better performance overall. Furthermore, using the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis, we find several common key features, which mainly contribute to model building. These include SES features, such as monthly household income, housing type, marriage status, and social infrastructure accessibility. Furthermore, the causal relationships of household income, per capita neighborhood sports facility area, and life satisfaction are analyzed to establish an effective prediction model for sarcopenia management in an aging population.