Risk of Frailty According to the Values of the Ankle-Brachial Index in the Toledo Study for Healthy Aging

Vascular function (VF) is a general term used to describe the regulation of blood flow, arterial pressure, capillary recruitment, filtration and central venous pressure, it´s well known that age has direct effects on the VF, and this may affect the frailty status.

To analyse the association between Frailty Trait Scale 5 (FTS 5) with VF and its changes at values below and above a nadir.

Prospective population-based cohort study.

Data from 1.230 patients were taken from the first wave (2006-2009) of the Toledo Study for Healthy Aging.

Frailty was evaluated using FTS 5, which evaluates 5 items: Body mass index, progressive Romberg, physical activity, usual gait speed and hand grip strength. VF was assessed using the ankle-brachial index (ABI) as an indirect measure of VF. Screening for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease was also performed by self-reporting and by searching medical records, and was used as exclusion criteria.

The optimal ABI cut-off point that maximized the adjusted R2 was 1.071. We observed a statistically significant association for FTS 5 score above and below the ABI cut-off points. For every tenth that the ABI decreased below the cut-off point the patient had an increase in the FTS 5 score of 0.47 points and in every tenth that increased above the cut-off point the increase in the FTS 5 score was 0.41 points. Of all FTS 5 items, the gait speed was the only item that showed a significant association with an ABI changes 0.28 and 0.21 points for every tenth below and above the cut-off point, respectively.

Frailty is highly associated with VF. In addition, FTS 5 and its gait speed criteria are useful to detect VF impairments, via changes in ABI.