Significant Association between Physical Performance and Inflammatory Biomarkers in Older Adults with Frailty in Rural Thailand

Abstract

Background: The etiology of frailty is complex and incompletely understood, and is associated with alterations in the immune system, resulting in chronic low-grade inflammation. However, few studies have explored the inflammatory biomarkers related to physical performance in the elderly. Methods: We evaluated the prevalence of frailty with a cross-sectional study among older adults in rural communities in Thailand (n = 457, mean age of 71.4 ± 5.8 years) with Fried’s frailty phenotype including five criteria: weight loss, exhaustion, slowness, weakness, and inactivity. The association between inflammatory biomarkers (serum interleukin-6, IL-6 and C-reactive protein, CRP levels) and physical performance (grip strength, walk times and VO2Max) was examined in frail participants (n=64). Results: The prevalence of frailty and pre-frailty in this population was 37.4% (95% CI, 32.9-42.0) and 54% (95% CI, 49.4-58.7). Multiple linear regression analysis found that serum IL-6 level was significantly elevated in frail older adults with low grip strength (beta = -0.348, SE= 0.155, p = 0.029). Serum CRP level was also elevated significantly in frail older adults with low grip strength (beta = -0.049, SE= 0.023, p = 0.04) and low VO2Max (beta = -0.047, SE= 0.019, p = 0.016) after adjustment for sex, age, hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, and BMI. Conclusion: Our findings support a low level of grip strength as predictor of inflammatory biomarkers in older adults with frailty. Primary care practitioners could use frailty indicators and performance combined with serum biomarkers for early health risk detection in older adults.

Effects of functional training on pain and functional capacity in elderly women

“…These findings corroborate the literature, demonstrating that multicomponent exercise programs for the elderly, such as FT, are able to provide improvements in physical performance, delay frailty and decrease inflammation, including those who are frail. 23 This evidence helps to explain the reduction of pain and its association with the improvement in physical capacity observed in the present study.…”

Interleukin-6 Expression in Patients with Frailty Syndrome

“…Almost half of the participants had a BMI that placed them in the obesity 1 group (40.0%). Marfiani et al [15] reported 18.4% obesity for the same age group as our study, and Sadjapong et al [16] reported 14.5% obesity in Thailand. Nangoy and Kumala [6] explored the effect of physical activity on fat mass, finding that subjects with low physical activity had a 2.58-fold greater risk of excess fat mass than those with high physical activity.…”