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Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice

Frailty linked to multiple heart, blood-vessel or metabolic diseases

Higher versus lower frailty scores were linked to multiple heart, blood-vessel or metabolic diseases, with a hazard ratio—a relative rate measure—of 1.33.

Paper by Jun Wei, Qian Ding, Xinglin Chen, Jun Zhang
Figure 1 from Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice
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Figure 1. Wei et al., CC BY

Our read

Biomarkers
Studied:
Cohort study of 25,876 adults free of cardiometabolic multimorbidity at baseline
What changed:
Higher frailty scores were linked to developing multiple heart, blood-vessel or metabolic diseases (hazard ratio 1.33)
The catch:
Other health differences between participants could contribute to the frailty–disease link

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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Adults aged 50 or older in China, England and Europe who initially did not have multiple cardiovascular or metabolic diseases were included in an observational analysis of three aging cohorts. Cardiovascular diseases affect the heart or blood vessels. Among 25,876 participants, 1,364 developed multiple conditions during follow-up.

The researchers assessed frailty using an index of accumulated health problems. They also assessed a blood-fat measure called the atherogenic index of plasma and scores combining it with frailty. Higher frailty and combined scores were associated with greater risk of developing multiple conditions. The blood-fat measure alone showed positive associations in individual cohorts, but estimates varied substantially between cohorts. Its pooled estimate’s range of likely values included no difference.

Why it matters

The accumulation of health problems with age raises questions about who goes on to develop multiple cardiovascular or metabolic diseases. Examining frailty alongside blood fats addresses how these aspects of health relate to that risk.

Caveats

Other differences in participants’ health could have contributed to the links between these scores and later disease. The abstract does not specify the score increases represented by the hazard ratios.

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