Frailty is a state of inflammation, physical weakness, degraded immune responses, and in general a loss of resilience to stresses such as infection and injury. The state of frailty is well known to correlate with mortality risk. Clinicians assess the degree of frailty in a patient via the use of a standardized frailty index. This is a simple and rapidly conducted assessment focused on the capacity to undertake everyday tasks, quality of life, and health issues. As shown here, the risk of mortality is greatly increased in frail individuals.
The frailty index (FI), a proxy measure of accelerated biological aging, predicts adverse outcomes in older adults. We investigated whether the FI predicts mortality in a community-based Korean older adult population and its association with subjective health status over 2 years. This prospective cohort study included 936 community-dwelling individuals aged ≥60 years. The primary outcome was 2-year all-cause mortality. Quality of life was assessed using the European Quality of Life Five-Dimension Three-Level (EQ-5D-3L).
Of the 936 participants, 111 (12%) were non-frail, 230 (25%) were mildly frail, and 595 (63%) were moderately to severely frail. The prevalence of moderate to severe frailty increased with age. The moderate-severe frailty group had a ≥5-fold increased risk of mortality compared to the non-frail group (adjusted relative risk, 5.79). Among those completing follow-up, the moderate-severe frailty group reported more problems across all EQ-5D-3L domains at 2 years. To conclude, frail older adults are at increased risk of mortality, but this risk was significant only for those in the moderate-to-severe frailty category at 2-year follow-up.
