Observational studyPloS one2025
Abdominal computed tomography-assessed muscle quality and its prognostic value in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease initiating hemodialysis.
Observational study in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Unravelling Sarcopenia in Chronic Kidney Disease: From Pathogenesis to Diagnosis and Therapeutics.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSkeletal muscle density (SMD), assessed via L3 level computed tomography (CT), is a critical marker of muscle quality with remarkable prognostic value in various clinical settings. This study investigates prognostic values of the SMD of abdominal CT images and to verifies its relationship with other variables indicating sarcopenia in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients.
methodsAll 458 patients initiating hemodialysis for maintenance were enrolled in this retrospective study. The sex-specific cut-off values of the SMD and skeletal muscle index (SMI) of L3 level abdominal CT were obtained by drawing the receiver operating characteristic curve for mortality. Cut-offs for identifying low SMD and SMI groups were applied.
resultsThe mean age of all patients was 67 years, and 300 (65.6%) patients were male. A total of 204 (44.5%) patients died. In the fully adjusted Cox regression analysis, patients with low SMD had a higher risk of death than those with SMD above the reference cut-off (adjusted hazard ratio (adjHR): 1.805 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.263-2.579, p-value < 0.001). The continuous variable SMD had a prognostic value in the multivariate Cox proportional analysis (adjHR: 0.961, 95% CI: 0.942-0.980, p-value <0.001), while the continuous variable SMI did not have prognostic value after adjustment (adjHR: 1.002, 95% CI: 0.986-1.019, p-value = 0.778). The multivariate regression analysis for SMD with the clinical variable showed that male sex, younger age, lower body mass index (BMI), and higher albumin remained significantly and independently associated with higher SMD. SMD showed an inverse correlation with BMI in contrast to SMI.
conclusionThe low SMD assessed by abdominal CT is independently associated with all-cause mortality in patients with advanced CKD initiating hemodialysis. In contrast to SMI, SMD showed a negative correlation with BMI, indicating that SMD might reflect dysfunctional sarcopenia better from perspective of the obesity paradox of CKD in this study population.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.