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Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Measuring Frailty in HIV-infected Individuals. Identification of Frail Patients is the First Step to Amelioration and Reversal of Frailty
Published on: July 24, 2013
Correlation Between Polypharmacy and Frailty Among Thai Older Persons Living with HIV
Aroonsiri Sangarlangkarn1, Tanakorn Apornpong2, Jennifer Woodard3
1Section of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Abstract:
Polypharmacy and frailty are correlated in Persons Living with HIV (PLWH) in the United States, but little is known about their correlation in resource-limited settings. Our cross-section study evaluated the correlation between polypharmacy and frailty among Thai 324 virally suppressed PLWH and 132 uninfected patients aged ≥50 between March 2016 and April 2017. The primary predictor was the number of patient-reported non-antiretroviral therapy (ART) medications. The outcome was having additional domain of the five Fried frailty phenotype domains (0 = normal, 1-2 = prefrail, >3 = frail). Most participants were male (63% PLWH, 67% uninfected) with few comorbidities (1.4 PLWH, 0.9 uninfected) and small median number of non-ART medications (2 PLWH, 1 uninfected). Frailty was uncommon (8.6% PLWH, 3.8% uninfected). Each additional non-ART medication correlated with 6% increased likelihood of having additional frailty domain among PLWH (95% CI: 0.002-0.11, p = .04) but not statistically significant among the uninfected. The association between polypharmacy and frailty is more pronounced in Thai PLWH than in participants without HIV. Further study is warranted to confirm this association in other resource-limited settings and explore potential deprescribing practices.
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