Aging Clinical and Experimental Research · Nov 30, 2019

Depressive symptoms are associated with incident frailty in a Chinese population: the Rugao Longevity and Aging Study

By Zhang N, Shi GP, Wang Y et al.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: This study aimed at investigating whether depression symptoms are associated with prevalent and incident physical frailty in Chinese older population. METHODS: We analyzed data of 1168 older Chinese adults aged 70 and above in the aging arm of the Rugao Longevity and Aging Study (RuLAS). Depressive symptoms (Geriatric Depression Scale ≥ 6) were assessed by the Geriatric Depression Scale. Frailty was defined using Fried phenotype criteria at baseline and 3-year survey. RESULTS: At baseline, 8.9% of the participants had depression symptoms. The prevalence of pre-frailty and frailty were 34.5% and 5.9%, respectively. The percentages of depressive symptoms increase from robust (5.3%) to pre-frail (11.2%), and then to frail (31.9%) groups. After adjustments of multiple covariates, depressive symptoms were associated with both prevalent pre-frailty (OR = 1.75, 95% CI 1.08-2.84) and prevalent frailty (OR = 5.64, 95% CI 2.85-11.14) at baseline. At 3-year survey, 9.3% participants reported the development of frailty. After multiple adjustments, depressive symptoms were associated with a 2.79-fold (95% CI 1.09-7.10) increased risk of 3-year incident frailty. CONCLUSION: Depressive symptoms are associated with prevalent and incident frailty in Chinese older population. Together with the observations of the European populations, depressive symptoms may be a candidate risk factor of frailty.

doi.org/10.1007/s40520-019-01409-x PubMed 31786744 Populations