Leisure Activities, Genetic Risk, and Frailty: Evidence from the Chinese Adults Aged 80 Years or Older

Abstract

Introduction: About half of adults aged ≥ 80 years suffer from frailty. Exercise is considered effective in preventing frailty but may be inapplicable to adults aged ≥ 80 years due to physical limitations. As an alternative, we aimed to explore the association of leisure activities with frailty and identify potential interaction with established polygenic risk score (PRS) among adults aged ≥ 80 years. Methods: Analyses were performed in a prospective cohort study of 7471 community-living older adults aged ≥ 80 years who were recruited between 2002 and 2014 from 23 provinces in China. Leisure activity was assessed using a seven-question leisure activity index and frailty was defined as a frailty index ≥ 0.25 using a validated 39-item health-related scale. The PRS was constructed using 59 single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with frailty in a subsample of 2541 older adults. Cox proportional hazards models were used to explore the associations of leisure activities, PRS with frailty. Results: The mean age of participants was 89.4 ± 6.6 years (range: 80–116). In total, 2930 cases of frailty were identified during 42,216 person-years of follow-up. Each 1 unit increase in the leisure activity index was associated with 12% lower risk of frailty (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.88 [95%CI, 0.85-0.91]). Participants with high genetic risk (PRS>2.47×10-4) suffered from 26% higher risk of frailty. Interaction between leisure activity and genetic risk was not observed. Conclusion: Evidence is presented for the independent association of leisure activities and genetic risk with frailty. Engagement in leisure activities suggested to be associated with lower risk of frailty across all levels of genetic risk among adults aged ≥ 80 years.

Factors Associated with Frailty in Older Adults in Community and Nursing Home Settings: A Systematic Review with a Meta-Analysis

“…It is noteworthy that three studies [31,47,62] did not make a distinction between male and female participants. Of the entire corpus of studies, 20 [25][26][27]30,[32][33][34]37,41,45,[47][48][49][50]53,57,58,61,62] adopted a cross-sectional design, whereas the remaining 18 [29,31,35,36,[38][39][40][42][43][44]46,51,52,[54][55][56]59,60] constituted cohort studies. The detailed characteristics of the 38 studies included are systematically presented in Supplemental File S2 (Table S1).…”

The benefits of leisure activities on healthy life expectancy for older people with diabetes

“…The study by Sala et al [ 23 ] found that participation in leisure activities is extremely beneficial to older people as it can help them maintain healthy cognitive, physical, and mental health during aging. Zhou et al [ 24 ] examined the relationship between leisure activities and frailty in older people and pointed out that leisure activities can decrease the risk of frailty. In addition, many studies also pointed out that leisure activity participation has many benefits for older people, such as promoting mental health [ 25 , 26 ], health promotion [ 27 , 28 ], improving family relationships and interpersonal interactions [ 29 – 32 ], and increasing financial benefits [ 32 , 33 ].…”