BACKGROUND The major cardiovascular risk factors and existing cardiovascular disease have been linked to increased risk of the frailty syndrome. However, the association between ideal cardiovascular health and the risk of frailty in older adults is uncertain. METHODS AND RESULTS Prospective cohort study of 1745 individuals (≥60 years and free of cardiovascular disease) recruited during 2008 t...

BACKGROUND Frailty is a late-life syndrome of vulnerability to adverse health outcomes characterized by a phenotype that includes muscle weakness, fatigue, and inflammatory pathway activation. The identification of biologically relevant pathways that influence frailty is challenged by its biological complexity and the necessity in separating disease states from the syndrome of frailty. As with ...

Background frailty impacts older adults' ability to recover from an acute illness, injuries and other stresses. Currently, a systematic synthesis of available interventions to prevent or reduce frailty does not exist. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of interventions and international policies designed to prevent or reduce the level of frailty in community-dwelling older adults. Metho...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To describe frailty and associated factors in breast cancer survivors (BCSs) and evaluate whether BCSs are frail at an earlier age than female participants from in two large epidemiological studies. DESIGN Descriptive, cross-sectional. SETTING School of Nursing at Oregon Health and Science University. SAMPLE 216 BCSs aged 53-87 years who were a mean 5-7 years post-treat...

BACKGROUND As the population ages, increasing numbers of older adults are undergoing surgery. Frailty is prevalent in older adults and may be a better predictor of post-operative morbidity and mortality than chronological age. The aim of this review was to examine the impact of frailty on adverse outcomes in the 'older old' and 'oldest old' surgical patients. METHODS A systematic review was u...

Frailty models are used in survival analysis to account for unobserved heterogeneity in individual risks to disease and death. To analyze bivariate data on related survival times (e.g. matched pairs experiments, twin or family data), bivariate correlated frailty models were suggested, where the frailties were constructed using independent additive components. The purpose of this paper is to des...

Frailty is an age-related syndrome that has been well-described in the last ten years. It can be characterized by diminished strength, endurance, and reduced physiologic function. With multiple causes and contributors, frailty is highly correlated with functional decline and chronic diseases. Currently, there are no standardized tests or biomarkers that can be used to identify frail patients, t...

The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal association between positive affect and onset of frailty for 1,558 initially nonfrail older Mexican Americans from the Hispanic Established Populations for Epidemiological Studies of the Elderly database. The incidence of frailty increased 7.9% during the 7-year follow-up period. High positive affect was found to significantly lower the risk...

Frailty is an emerging concept in gerontology. Two popular approaches to quantify frailty include the deficit accumulation approach which quantifies frailty by the proportion of deficits from a list of symptoms, signs, diseases and functional limitations present (the so-called “frailty index” [FI]), and a rules-based approach which defines frailty by the presence of at least 3 of 5 criteria (ex...

INTRODUCTION Frailty is a major concern due to its costly and widespread consequences, yet evidence of effective interventions to delay or reduce frailty is lacking. Our previous study found that a multifactorial intervention was feasible and effective in reducing frailty in older people who were already frail. Identifying and treating people in the pre-frail state may be an effective means to ...