Cross-sectional relationships between sedentary behavior and frailty in older adults

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between frailty and sedentary behavior and to examine the discriminative ability of sedentary behavior in screening frailty in older adults.

This was a cross-sectional study based on data from an epidemiologic population-based household survey involving 316 community-dwelling older adults (≥60 years) of both sexes (173 women and 143 men). The frailty was measured from an adapted version of the criteria proposed by Fried et al. in 2001, which is based on the presence of three or more of the following components: shrinking, weakness, poor endurance/exhaustion, slowness and low activity. Sedentary behavior was determined by the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (long version).

The prevalence of frailty was 23.8%, and the average time in sedentary behavior was 6.1±3.2 h/day. Sedentary behavior was independently and positively associated with frailty (PR=1.10; 95% CI: 1.02-1.19; P=0.013). The ROC curve showed that the sedentary behavior could discriminate frail older adults (AUC=0.66; 95% CI: 0.61-0.72), and the best cutoff point was 7 h/day (sensitivity =54% and specificity =75%).

Frailty is strongly associated with sedentary behavior. Sedentary behavior can be a potential marker in screening of frailty in community-dwelling older adults. Our findings suggest that reducing the time with sedentary behavior and increasing the time with physical activity may prevent frailty syndrome.