Association of unhealthful plant-based diet and social isolation with multi-trajectories of frailty in surviving chinese older adults over a 10-year follow-up

OBJECTIVE: To investigate individual and joint associations of unhealthful Plant-based Diet Index (uPDI) and social isolation with multi-trajectories of frailty in surviving Chinese older adults over a 10-year follow-up. METHODS: We analyzed data of 2,440 surviving older adults from 2008 to 2018 in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. Group-Based Multi-Trajectory Modeling (GBMTM) and Logistic regression analyses were conducted to analyses data. RESULTS: The GBMTM identified four distinct frailty trajectories: "No Frailty STable Group," "Mild Frailty Group," "Incident IADL-Dominant Deterioration Group," and "Global Frailty Deterioration Group." The analysis revealed that both higher uPDI and social isolation quartiles were associated with the higher risk of adverse frailty trajectories. Notably, the combined higher quartiles of uPDI and social isolation further increasing the risk. CONCLUSION: uPDI and social isolation were both individually and jointly associated with multi-trajectories of frailty in surviving Chinese older adults over a 10-year follow-up.