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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Sport and Exercise Nutrition
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1460133
This article is part of the Research Topic Preventative Medicine: Nutritional and Lifestyle Interventions for Healthy Ageing and Chronic Diseases View all 15 articles

Effects of exercise with or without β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate (HMB) supplementation on muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical performance in patients with sarcopenia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Provisionally accepted
Yiwei Feng Yiwei Feng 1Peng Chen Peng Chen 1Tao Li Tao Li 1Ping Wan Ping Wan 2*Rengfei Shi Rengfei Shi 1*
  • 1 Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
  • 2 Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objectives: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the effects of exercise with/without β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate (HMB) supplementation on muscle mass, muscle strength, physical performance, and body composition in patients with sarcopenia.A literature search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the effects of exercise with or without HMB supplementation on muscle mass, muscle strength, physical performance, and body composition in patients with sarcopenia was conducted using PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, The Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Scopus, Science Direct, China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI), and Wan Fang database. The search was limited to studies published up to April 2024 for each database. The outcome measures included muscle mass, muscle strength, physical performance, and body composition. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool was used to evaluate the quality of the included literature, and RevMan 5.4 software was employed to perform a meta-analysis of the outcome indicators.Results: Five RCTs involving 257 elderly patients with sarcopenia were included in this study. Metaanalysis showed that in terms of physical performance, exercise with HMB supplementation significantly increased gait speed in sarcopenic patients compared to the exercise combined with the placebo group (SMD=0.48, 95% CI: 0.15 to 0.82, p=0.005), but exercise combined with HMB supplementation did not have significant effects on SMI (SMD=0.06, 95% CI: -0.20 to 0.32, p=0.66), grip strength (SMD=0.23, 95% CI: -0.05 to 0.52, p=0.11), five-time chair stand test (SMD=-0.83, 95% CI: -1.88 to 0.21, p= 0.12), fat-free mass (SMD=0.04, 95% CI:-0.26 to 0.35, p=0.78), BMI (SMD=-0.09, 95% CI:-0.43 to 0.25, p=0.60), and fat mass (SMD=0.01, 95% CI:-0.25 to 0.27, p=0.94).The current evidence indicates that exercise with HMB supplementation may enhance physical performance in patients with sarcopenia compared to exercise with the placebo group. However, the effects on muscle mass, muscle strength, and body composition are likely minimal. The above findings are limited by the number of included studies and require further validation through high-quality studies.

    Keywords: Exercise, β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate (HMB), Sarcopenia, Muscle Strength, muscle mass, physical function, Body Composition

    Received: 05 Jul 2024; Accepted: 06 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Feng, Chen, Li, Wan and Shi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Ping Wan, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai, China
    Rengfei Shi, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, 200072, Shanghai Municipality, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.