Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and depression are common and frequently misdiagnosed in older adults in primary care. In particular, depression combined with cognitive dysfunction is associated with a higher risk of dementia. We tried to find the usefulness of orientation to time as an easy case-finding tool for suspecting MCI or depression. This cross-sectional study included 2668 community-dwelling adults aged 70–84 years from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (mean age of 76.0 ± 3.9 years). MCI was defined based on the criteria from the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association; depression was defined as a score of ≥ 6 on the Geriatric Depression Scale—Short Form (GDS-SF). Time orientation to year, month, day of the week, date, and season were tested. The sensitivity for the diagnosis of each of MCI and depression was the highest for the orientation to year (MCI, 17.7%; depression, 16.0%). For the diagnosis of MCI or depression, orientation to the year had the highest sensitivity (15.5%), and the specificity, PPV, NPV was 95.5%, 67.0%, 65.5%. In conclusion, asking “what year is it?” can be helpful as an aid to case finding to suspect MCI or depression in community and primary care settings.

Background: Resilience refers to the ability to recover function after encounter with stressors. While psychological resilience refers to the ability to cope with psychological stress, physical resilience refers to functional restoration after biomedical challenges. However, there is no gold standard to assess physical resilience. Accordingly, we explored whether the perceived recovery time from common cold could be used to represent physical resilience. Methods: We analyzed data of individuals aged 72-86 years who had participated in the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study in 2019. Among the 1,455 survey participants, 594 with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and missing data were excluded. The remaining 861 participants were divided into three groups according to the number of days required for recovery from common cold (Group 1, 1-4 days; Group 2, 5-7 days; and Group 3, ≥8 days). The relationship between recovery time and psychological resilience scale (Brief Resilience Scale [BRS]) score, physical frailty (Fried's physical frailty phenotype and the Korean Frailty Index for Primary Care [KFI-PC]), and frailty outcome was investigated. Results: Group 3 comprised individuals more likely to be women, sleep less, be less physically less active, fall more often, and have a low EuroQol visual analogue scale score. BRS scores differed significantly among the three groups (Group 1, 13.29; Group 2, 14.32; Group 3, 15.22; p<0.001). In multivariate analysis, post-hoc analysis with the Bonferroni method revealed significant differences in BRS between Groups 1-2 and Groups 1-3. However, the KFI-PC and number of falls did not differ significantly. Conclusions: Longer days of recovery from cold were associated with worse BRS scores. However, neither frailty nor the number of falls was related.