Lab and clinical frailty scores often disagreed in adults
Among 1,160 adults, laboratory and clinical frailty scores were weakly correlated, at 0.11, with disagreement increasing with age.
Paper by Silvia Vittoria Cracas, Giulia Garro, Jacopo Venetucci et al.
1,186 participants
Limit: Selecting laboratory measures for association with clinical frailty could bias the comparison
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In an observational study, researchers compared laboratory and clinical frailty scores in 1,160 community-dwelling adults aged 18–89 in the Novara Cohort Study. Frailty describes vulnerability to health problems. They selected 23 laboratory measures associated with clinical frailty after evaluating tests in 1,186 adults. They then calculated laboratory scores using age- and sex-specific reference ranges.
The two scores showed low agreement for individuals. Older age was associated with relatively higher laboratory scores. Female sex, depressive symptoms, concern about falling and having multiple illnesses were associated with relatively higher clinical scores. Changing the weighting of laboratory measures increased the correlation between the scores but did not eliminate individual disagreements.
Why it matters
Frailty may involve biological changes that precede or occur partly independently of clinically apparent health problems. Understanding their relationship could help clarify how vulnerability develops with age.
Caveats
This observational comparison could not determine whether divergent scores reflected different stages of frailty or different paths of aging-related vulnerability. The laboratory measures were selected for their association with the clinical score.
- Machine learning
- Depressive symptoms
- Concern about falling
- Cognitive impairment
- Physical impairment
- Humans
The paper
Silvia Vittoria Cracas, Giulia Garro, Jacopo Venetucci et al.
Frontiers in Aging, Oct 30, 2026, CC BY, Accepted, not yet published
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