Body Composition in Paraplegia

Paraplegia leads to immobilisation associated with profound changes in body composition. The potential risks involved with these changes i.e. loss of lean tissue mass (LM) and bone mineral density (BMD) vs. gain in fat mass (FM) in body composition have implications for the health of the disabled individuals [1]. Body fat has been identified as a significant predictor of mortality in humans making body composition measurement to quantify nutritional and health status an important issue for human health [2-4]. Moreover, some disorders such as carbohydrate intolerance, insulin resistance, lipid abnormalities, and heart disease occur prematurely and at a higher prevalence in disabled populations may be related to adverse changes in body composition that result from immobilization and skeletal muscle denervation [5]. To standardize or index physiological variables, such as resting metabolic rate and power fat free mass (FFM) is usually used [4]. Skeletal muscle represents 50% of the non fat component in the total body [6, 7] and exact quantification of the amount of skeletal muscle is important to assess nutritional status, disease risk, danger of illnesses, physical function, atrophic effects of aging, and muscle-wasting diseases [8, 9].