Abstract
Objective
Frailty is a multifactorial syndrome characterized by social, physical, and psychological
stressors. Network analysis is a graphical statistical technique that can contribute
to the understanding of this complex, multifactorial phenomenon. The aim of this study
was to investigate the relationships between social, physical, and psychological factors
and frailty in older persons.
Design
A cross-sectional study.
Settings and Participants
A total of 2588 community-dwelling older persons from the FIBRA (Frailty in Brazilian
Older Persons) 2008 to 2009 study.
Measures
Participants were assessed for sociodemographic variables, physical and mental health,
and the frailty phenotype. Partial correlation network analysis with the Graphical
Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (glasso) estimator was performed to determine the relationships between social, physical,
and psychological factors and frailty.
Results
Mean participant age was 72.31 years, 7.0% were frail, and 50.6% were prefrail. In
the network structure, frailty correlated most strongly with physical and psychological
factors such as diabetes and depression and exhibited greater proximity to physical
factors such as disability, urinary incontinence, and cardiovascular risk as measured
by waist-to-hip ratio.
Conclusions and Implications
The analytical strategy used can provide information for specific subpopulations of
interest and here confirmed that frailty is not uniformly determined but associated
with different psychological and physical health factors, thereby allowing better
understanding and management of this condition.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 27, 2020
Footnotes
This work was supported by the Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
