The Association of Nutrition Quality with Frailty Syndrome among the Elderly

Abstract

Low diet quality among the elderly may be correlated with some diseases, including Frailty Syndrome (FS). This decline in function restricts the activity of older people, resulting in higher assistance costs. The aim of this study was to increase knowledge of diet quality predictors. Dietary intake was assessed among 196 individuals aged 60+ years using the three-day record method and FS by Fried’s criteria. Based on the compliance with the intake recommendation (% of EAR/AI), we distinguished three clusters that were homogeneous in terms of the nutritional quality of the diet, using Kohonen’s neural networks. The prevalence of frailty in the entire group was 3.1%, pre-frailty 38.8%, and non-frailty 58.1%. Cluster 1 (91 people with the lowest diet quality) was composed of a statistically significant higher number of the elderly attending day care centers (20.7%), frail (6.9%), pre-frail (51.7%), very low vitamin D intake (23.8% of AI), using sun cream during the summer months (always 19.8% or often 39.6%), having diabetes (20.7%), having leg pain when walking (43.1%), and deteriorating health during the last year (53.5%). The study suggests the need to take initiatives leading to the improvement of the diet of the elderly, especially in day care senior centers, where there are more frail individuals, including nutritional education for the elderly and their caregivers.

The effectiveness of nurse-led interventions to manage frailty in community-dwelling older people: a systematic review

“…In the current review, three studies noted that nutritional interventions either in the form of education, training [ 1 , 37 ], or nutrition supplementation [ 40 ] demonstrated a reduction in frailty among older people living in the community. This finding is in line with a study reported initiatives like nutritional educations as a means of improving the frailty status of community-dwelling older people [ 68 ]. However, another study found that nutritional supplements or nutritional education delivered in alone may not be effective for the management of frailty in older people [ 69 ].…”

Progression of Selected Parameters of the Clinical Profile of Patients with Periodontitis Using Kohonen’s Self-Organizing Maps

“…In addition, in psychiatry, neural networks can be successfully used, for example, in the study of Loula et al where according to Brazilian statistics on mortality and the prevalence of major depressive disorder, a virtual population was created, and its five different types of inhabitants were clustered using Kohonen’s self-organizing map (SOM) [ 45 ]. In another study, Kohonen networks were used to assess the nutrition quality with frailty syndrome among the elderly [ 46 ]. Self-organizing maps (SOMs) were used with the socio-demographic data such as age, gender, and race to perform the correct classification of asthma outcome.…”

“…In the dermatologic study of Styła et al the dermatoscopic images were used to train Kohonen neural networks to provide fully automatic diagnostic systems capable of determining the type of pigmented skin lesion [ 48 ]. Referring to the above and recent studies, it was shown that machine learning algorithms, particularly Kohonen networks, might be useful in medicine and can improve diagnosis and give clinicians more tools in treatment planning [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. According to our study, we can recommend other specialists use Kohonen networks in their daily practice to ease the prediction of the progression of periodontitis with the usage of data: gender, age, active nicotinism, the number of teeth still present, the approximate plaque index (API), bleeding on probing (BoP), pocket depth (PD), and clinical attachment loss.…”