The challenges of muscle biopsy in a community based geriatric population

Objectives
To describe the difficulties of obtaining muscle samples using a Bergstrom needle technique in a frail older adult population. The data were obtained from a study primarily investigating immunosenescence in frailty. An intended research technique was skeletal muscle biopsy in a small subset of participants to investigate muscle morphology and local inflammatory factors.

Results
Forty healthy older adults and 37 frail older adults were considered for a Bergstrom needle muscle biopsy. Of these, 17.5% of healthy older adults and 94.6% of the frail older adults had single or multiple participant factors resulting in a contra-indication to muscle biopsy. 40.7% of healthy older female participants were at risk of a failed muscle biopsy due to low muscle mass. Considering only muscle mass muscle biopsy would have been successful in 18.7% of the frail older women and 21.4% of the frail older men. In this population, muscle biopsy was not feasible because of contra-indications in the majority of participants. This questions whether a biopsy sample obtained from frail older individuals, is actually representative of this population and supports the need to disclose biopsy failure rate in this population.