Frailty Index in Europeans: Association with determinants of health

Abstract

Aim The Frailty Index (FI) summarizes differences in health status within individuals, and the determinants of health drive that variability. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of education, income, smoking, alcohol intake, and parental longevity on the FI variability in subjects of the same chronological age group. Methods Analyses were based on a 40-item FI based on the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, http://www.share-project.org/), including 29,905 participants aged ≥ 50 from 12 countries. For each sex, the sample was divided into age categories (50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and ≥ 90) and FI quartiles within age categories were calculated. Multivariate ordinal regressions were computed to assess the relative contribution of the health determinants on the FI quartiles in each age group. Results In women, the most significant multivariate predictors were years of education (Odds Ratios [ORs] around 0.9), and difficulties making ends meet (ORs between 1.8 and 2.1). In men, the most significant multivariate predictors were years of education (ORs around 0.9), difficulties making ends meet (ORs between 1.6 and 2.1), mother’s age of death (OR under 1), and father’s age of death (ORs under 1). Conclusions Consistently with the literature, education and income explained, in both sexes, cross-sectional variability in FI in subjects of the same chronological age group. The influence of parental longevity seemed to be greater in men, which mirrors previous studies showing that genetic factors may have a higher impact on longevity in men.

Sex differences in frailty: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…For example, an individual's wealth and the level of neighbourhood deprivation impacts on frailty and mortality but the size and direction of the impact may differ between the sexes (Gu et al, 2009;Lang et al, 2009;Major et al, 2010;Romero-Ortuno, 2014;Woo et al, 2005). Factors such as marital status, education level and social supports have all been reported to impact on male and female frailty (Andrew et al, 2008;Gorman and Read, 2006;Gu et al, 2009;Szanton et al, 2010;Woo et al, 2005).…”

Tobacco smoking and smoking-related DNA methylation are associated with the development of frailty among older adults

“…1 Cigarette smoking has been shown to be one of the major causes of a wide spectrum of age-related health outcomes. 9 However, its association with the development of frailty is not yet well-established, and reported findings were inconsistent: several cross-sectional studies reported that smoking was associated with being less frail, [10][11][12] while most prospective cohort studies asserted that baseline smoking status was predictive of significantly accelerated progression of frailty at followup. 4,13,14 In addition, the mechanisms underlying the potential linkage between smoking and frailty yet remain unclear.…”

How We Fall Apart: Similarities of Human Aging in 10 European Countries

“…A couple of studies investigated the health deficit index (frailty index) using the SHARE data (Romero-Ortuno and Kenny, 2012;Harttgen et al, 2013, Theou et al, 2013Romero-Ortuno, 2014). 2 These studies focused mainly on the association of health deficits with mortality as well as with several socioeconomic indicators and on comparing health deficits of Europeans and citizens of selected developing countries.…”