Frailty profile in Brazilian older adults

Abstract

OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of frailty and to evaluate the associated factors in the non-institutionalized Brazilian population aged 50 years or older.METHODS The analyses were conducted in 8,556 participants of the baseline survey of the Longitudinal Study of Health of the Brazilian Elderly (ELSI-Brazil) conducted in 2015 and 2016. Frailty was defined based on five characteristics: weight loss, weakness, slowness, exhaustion and low level of physical activity. Participants with three or more characteristics were classified as frail. A Poisson regression model was used to examine the association between frailty and sociodemographic and health factors.RESULTS The prevalence of frailty was 9.0% (95%CI 8.0–10.1) among participants aged 50 years or over. Among the older adults aged 60 or over, the prevalence was 13.5% (95%CI 11.9–15.3) and 16.2% (95%CI 14.3–18.3) among those 65 aged years or over. Factors associated with higher prevalence of frailty were low schooling, residence without a partner, health conditions (poor self-rated health and two or more chronic diseases) and limitation to perform basic activities of daily living.CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of frailty among Brazilians aged 65 years or older is similar to their European counterparts. Poor health conditions, functional limitation and low schooling emerge as the factors most strongly associated with the frailty in this population.

Prevalence and Associated Factors of Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Indonesia, 2014–2015

“…The importance of partner support in relation to frailty, emphasizes the need for social support [21]. Persons with lower education and lower income may access health services and practice health behaviors less often, which may contribute to the development of frailty [10,21]. Compared to Sumatra, the prevalence of frailty was higher in the other study regions (Java, Major island groups).…”

“…In consistence with previous studies [9,[12][13][14][15], this study found that older age, being unmarried, separated, divorced or widowed, and in the bivariate analysis that poorer economic status and lower education were associated with frailty. Frailty is associated with aging by accumulating deficiencies in several physiological systems [21]. The importance of partner support in relation to frailty, emphasizes the need for social support [21].…”

“…Frailty is associated with aging by accumulating deficiencies in several physiological systems [21]. The importance of partner support in relation to frailty, emphasizes the need for social support [21]. Persons with lower education and lower income may access health services and practice health behaviors less often, which may contribute to the development of frailty [10,21].…”

“…The IFLS-5 was a population-based household survey conducted in 2014-2015, using a multi-stage stratified sampling design (321 enumeration areas-EAs, 20 and 30 randomly selected households from each urban and rural EA, respectively, in 13 of 27 Indonesian provinces), representing 83% of the Indonesian population [24][25][26]. The computer-assisted personal interview system (CAPI) was utilized for conducting interviews, and the data were entered using CSPro [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. The questionnaire was developed in English and initially translated into Bahasa Indonesia by survey staff and then retranslated into English by two independent, outside translators, and pre-tested on 393 household members [24][25][26].…”

“…Sociodemographic risk factors for frailty include, older age [9,[12][13][14], female sex [9], lower income [14,15], lower education [9,15], and low social support or poor social networks [12,14]. Health variable risk factors for frailty, may include, poor health status [14,16], low quality of life or low life satisfaction [17,18], poor mental health (depression, insomnia) [19,20], lower cognitive functioning [11,16], higher comorbidity or number of chronic conditions [9,13,14,16,21], and functional disability [9,13,16,17,21]. In addition, behavioral risk factors include, lower fruit and vegetable consumption [22], tobacco use [23], polypharmacy [14,23], and falls [9,14,17].…”