Prevalence and associated factors of frailty among community dwelling older adults in Northwest China: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

ObjectivesTo investigate the prevalence of the comprehensive frailty and its associated factors among community dwelling older adults.DesignA cross-sectional study.SettingSix community healthcare centres in Xi’an City, Northwest China.ParticipantsA total of 2647 community dwelling older adults completed the study between March and August 2021.Primary and secondary outcome measuresThe primary outcome was the prevalence of frailty, measured with the Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument. The secondary outcomes were potential factors associated with frailty, measured with a social-demographic and health-related information sheet, the Short-Form Mini-Nutritional Assessment and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.ResultsThe participants averaged 27.77±10.13 in the total score of the Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument. According to the cut-off points defining the classification of frailty, the majority of the participants were with mild (n=1478, 55.8%) or high (n=390, 14.8%) frailty. Multivariate stepwise linear regression analysis demonstrated that older age, lower educational level, empty nesters, higher level of self-perceived medical burden, abnormal body weight, physical inactivity, medication taking, increased number of clinic visit, undernutrition and poor sleep quality are associated with higher total score in the Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument, indicating higher level of frailty. Multivariate multinomial logistic regression analysis exhibited similar findings but further captured female gender as a risk factor for the presence of mild and high frailty compared with no-low frailty.ConclusionThe prevalence of the comprehensive frailty and frailty in the physiological, psychological, social and environmental domains is high. A variety of social-demographic, health-related and behavioural factors were associated with the comprehensive frailty. Further investigations on frailty prevalence and its associated factors based on comprehensive assessments are desirable.

Prevalence and risk factors of frailty among older family caregivers

“…The nutritional status was a significant predictive factor of frailty since a lower nutritional status increased the risk of frailty. This finding is similar to previous studies with older adult study populations other than FCs, such as community-dwelling older people [16,[34][35][36]. In addition, previous studies have shown that many FCs are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition [6,37,38].…”

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

“…Furthermore, it has been observed that community-dwelling older adults who have attained a university education or higher typically exhibit a reduced degree of frailty. This observation is in alignment with the findings of prior research studies [34,71]. An individual's level of education is intricately linked to their health literacy, coping mechanisms, and the propensity to adhere to healthy lifestyle practices.…”

“…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).…”