Abstract
Objectives
Women are frailer than men across different populations and age groups. However, the
mechanisms are still not fully understood. One possible cause is pregnancy and motherhood.
The objective of this study was to examine trajectories of Frailty Index over time
according to the number of pregnancies.
Design
A prospective study with repeated measures over 14 years.
Setting and Participants
A total of 2060 community-dwelling older women aged ≥60 years in England.
Methods
The number of pregnancies was calculated as a sum of the number of live births and
the number of miscarriages, still-births, or abortions. The Frailty Index (FI) was
constructed using 60 deficits and repeatedly calculated every 2 years over 14 years.
Trajectories of FI according to the number of pregnancies were estimated by a mixed
effects model.
Results
Mean FI was 0.15 at baseline. A mixed effects model adjusted for age, smoking, alcohol
use, education, and wealth showed that FI increased over time. A higher number of
pregnancies were significantly associated with a higher FI (estimate = 0.0047, 95%
confidence interval = 0.0020, 0.0074).
Conclusions and Implications
The current study showed that a higher number of pregnancies were significantly associated
with a higher degree of frailty at baseline and over time. Pregnancy and child rearing
may explain some of the observed excess risk of frailty in women. Pregnancy-related
factors, such as pregnancy loss, types of delivery, length of pregnancy, childbearing,
and child rearing, should be examined in relation to frailty in future studies.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 07, 2020
Footnotes
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing has been funded by the National Institute of Aging in the United States and a consortium of UK government departments coordinated by the Office for the National Statistics, and the data are available through the UK Data Archive (http://data-archive.ac.uk). No specific funding was obtained for this research project.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
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