Frailty Across Age Groups

The implementation of an aging biomarker into clinical practice is under debate. The Frailty Index is a model of deficit accumulation and has shown to accurately capture frailty in older adults, thus bridging biological with clinical practice.

To describe the association of socio-demographic characteristics and the Frailty Index in different age groups (from 20 to over one hundred years) in a representative sample of Mexican subjects.

Cross-sectional analysis.

Nationwide and population-representative survey.

Adults 20-years and older interviewed during the last Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey (2012).

A 30-item Frailty Index following standard construction was developed. Multi-level regression models were performed to test the associations of the Frailty Index with multiple socio-demographic characteristics across age groups.

A total of 29,504 subjects was analyzed. The 30-item Frailty Index showed the highest scores in the older age groups, especially in women. No sociodemographic variable was associated with the Frailty Index in all the studied age groups. However, employment, economic income, and smoking status were more consistently found across age groups.

To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the Frailty Index in a representative large sample of a Latin American country. Increasing age and gender were closely associated with a higher score.