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Background: Physical frailty and cognitive impairment have been separately associated with falls. The purpose of the study is to examine the associations of physical frailty and cognitive impairment separately and jointly with incident recurrent falls among older adults.Methods: The analysis included 6000 older adults in community or non-nursing home residential care settings who were at least 65 years old and participated in the National Health and Aging Trends Study. Frailty was assessed using the physical frailty phenotype; cognitive impairment was defined by bottom quintile of the clock-drawing test or immediate and delayed 10-word recall, or self/proxy-report of diagnosis of dementia, or AD8 score at least 2. The marginal means/rates models were used to analyze the associations of frailty and cognitive impairment with recurrent falls over 6 years of follow-up between 2011 and 2017.Results: Of the 6000 older adults, 1787 (29.8%) had cognitive impairment only, 334 (5.6%) had frailty only, 615 (10.3%) had both, and 3264 (54.4%) had neither. After adjusting for age, sex, race, education, living alone, obesity, disease burden, and mobility disability, those with frailty (with or without cognitive impairment) at baseline had higher rates of recurrent falls than those without cognitive impairment and frailty (frailty only: rate ratio [RR] = 1.31, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.18-1.44; both: RR = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.17-1.40). The association was marginally significant for those with cognitive impairment only (RR = 1.07, 95% CI = 1.00-1.13).Conclusions: Frailty and cognitive impairment were independently associated with recurrent falls in noninstitutionalized older adults. There was a lack of synergistic effect between frailty and cognitive impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Racial/ethnic frailty prevalence disparities have been documented. Better elucidating how these operate may inform interventions to eliminate them. We aimed to determine whether physical frailty phenotype (PFP) prevalence disparities (i) are explained by health aspects, (ii) vary by income, or (iii) differ in degree across individual PFP criteria.Methods: Data came from the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study baseline evaluation. The study sample (n = 7,439) included persons in all residential settings except nursing homes. Logistic regression was used to achieve aims (i)-(iii) listed above. In (i), health aspects considered were body mass index (BMI) status and number of chronic diseases. Analyses incorporated sampling weights and adjusted for sociodemographic factors.Results: Comparisons are versus non-Hispanic whites: Non-Hispanic blacks (odds ratio [OR] = 1.46, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.21-1.76) and Hispanics (1.56, 1.20-2.03) continued to have higher odds of frailty after accounting for BMI status and number of chronic diseases. Non-Hispanic blacks had elevated odds of frailty in all income quartiles, including the highest (OR = 2.19, 1.24-3.397). Racial/ethnic disparities differed considerably across frailty criteria, ranging from a twofold increase in odds of slowness to a 25%-30% decrease in odds of self-reported exhaustion.Conclusions: BMI and disease burden do not explain racial/ethnic frailty disparities. Black-white disparities are not restricted to low-income groups. Racial/ethnic differences vary considerably by NHATS PFP criteria. Our findings support the need to better understand mechanisms underlying elevated frailty burden in older non-Hispanic black and Hispanic Americans, how phenotypic measures capture frailty in racial/ethnic subgroups and, potentially, how to create assessments more comparable by race/ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Frailty and cognitive impairment (CI) are associated and often coexist in older adults. Whether temporal patterns of occurrence reflect different etiologies remain unknown.Methods: Participants from the National Health and Aging Trends Study were assessed annually (2011-2016) for frailty (Fried's criteria) and CI (bottom quintile of clock drawing test or immediate and delayed recall; proxy-report of dementia diagnosis or AD8 ≥ 2). We used the Fine & Gray model to identify correlates of frailty onset before CI, CI onset before frailty, and frailty-CI co-occurrence, accounting for death as a competing risk.Results: Of 3,848 free of frailty, CI, and dementia at baseline, 2,183 (61.2%) developed neither frailty nor CI during the 5-year follow-up; 343 (8.3%) developed frailty first; 1,014 (24.4%) developed CI first; and 308 (6.0%) developed frailty-CI co-occurrence. Incident dementia, as a marker of underlying neuropathologies, was associated with greater likelihood of CI onset first (subdistribution hazard ratios [SHR] = 2.60, 95% confidence interval [ci] 2.09 to 3.24), and frailty-CI co-occurrence (SHR = 8.77, 95% ci 5.79 to 13.28), but lower likelihood of frailty onset first (SHR = 0.38, 95% ci 0.21 to 0.68). Number of comorbidities was only associated with frailty occurrence first (1 comorbidity: SHR = 2.51, 95% ci 1.15 to 5.47; 4+ comorbidities: SHR = 6.48, 95% ci 2.78 to 15.48).Conclusions: Different patterns of frailty and CI occurrence exist, and dementia-related pathologies and comorbidities may be important correlates of order of emergence, potentially reflecting different etiologies. Future investigation into relationships between these patterns and dementia subtypes and related pathologies is needed to elucidate etiologic pathways and to provide new targets for prevention, intervention, and risk screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Frailty assessment provides a means of identifying older adults most vulnerable to adverse outcomes. Attention to frailty in clinical practice is more likely with better understanding of its prevalence and associations with patient characteristics. We sought to provide national estimates of frailty in older people.Methods: A popular, validated frailty phenotype proposed by Fried and colleagues was applied to 7,439 participants in the 2011 baseline of the National Health and Aging Trends Study, a national longitudinal study of persons aged 65 and older. All measures drew on a 2-hour in-person interview. Weighted estimates of frailty prevalence were obtained.Results: Fifteen percent (95% CI: 14%, 16%) of the older non-nursing home population is frail, and 45% is prefrail (95% CI: 44%, 47%). Frailty is more prevalent at older ages, among women, racial and ethnic minorities, those in supportive residential settings, and persons of lower income. Independently of these characteristics, frailty prevalence varies substantially across geographic regions. Chronic disease and disability prevalence increase steeply with frailty. Among the frail, 42% were hospitalized in the previous year, compared to 22% of the prefrail and 11% of persons considered robust. Hip, back, and heart surgery in the last year were associated with frailty. Over half of frail persons had a fall in the previous year.Conclusions: Our findings support the importance of frailty in late-life health etiology and potential value of frailty as a marker of risk for adverse health outcomes and as a means of identifying opportunities for intervention in clinical practice and public health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Measurement gaps continue to hamper fuller understanding of late-life disability trends and dynamics. This article reports findings that validate the self-reported components of the disability protocol to be used in the new National Health and Aging Trends Study. The protocol was designed to redress existing measures by attending to environmental aspects of disability, capturing a broader range of capacity to perform tasks and including participation restriction items. Methods. We undertook an in-person validation study to determine the reliability, validity, and initial measurement properties of the National Health and Aging Trends Study self-reported disability protocol (n = 326). A random subset (n = 111) was readministered the protocol within 2–4 weeks. The interview and reinterview included new self-reported measures of physical capacity, activity limitations, and participation restrictions, as well as established performance and cognitive tests. We calculated percent agreement and kappa between interviews for all self-reported items and summary measures. We also assessed the construct validity of summary measures through correlations with demographic characteristics, frailty, memory, and performance-based mobility and confirmed whether activity limitations and participation restrictions were distinct domains. Results. New items and derived summary measures demonstrate robustness over a short time period, with kappas for retained/recommended items in the .60–.80 range. The summary measures correlate as expected with age, sex, residential status, and established performance-based constructs. Two factors, representing activity limitations and participation restrictions, were confirmed. Conclusions. The National Health and Aging Trends Study protocol preserves the ability to examine more traditional measures of functioning while offering new insights into how activities are performed and preserving key conceptual distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: The role of behavioral and psychological symptoms as an independent risk factor of nursing home placement (NHP) in cognitively impaired elders has been controversial.Methods: A community sample of 449 cognitively impaired elders and their knowledgeable informants (KIs) was followed for 1 year. Subjects were classified as having dementia (n=330) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n=119) using a neuropsychiatric battery of 4 tests. Subject characteristics (behavioral and psychological symptoms, demographic, health related, and health services use) and KI characteristics were entered into the Cox proportional hazard regression analysis.Results: The incidence rate of NHP was 8.9%. At baseline, 57.7% of subjects had at least 1 behavioral and psychological symptom. Presence of these symptoms was associated with shorter time to NHP only in a univariate analysis. Other factors significant in the multivariate Cox modeling were being white (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.17), having fair or poor physical health rating (HR= 2.12), having greater numbers of difficulties with activities of daily living (HR = 1.46), and having a physician's diagnosis of dementia (HR = 6.76). An interaction was found between the last 2 variables (HR = 0.59), indicating that among those with a diagnosis of dementia, a greater number of difficulties with activities of daily living delayed time to NHP. KI characteristics were not associated with NHP.Conclusions: Behavioral and psychological symptoms were common, but having these symptoms was not an independent risk factor of NHP. Caregiver characteristics may not play as important a role in determining NHP as subject characteristics. Interventions aimed at improving or maintaining physical or cognitive functioning may have better chances of delaying NHP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the factors that affect time to nursing home placement (NHP) in a sample of community-dwelling cognitively impaired elders. Features of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia; Characteristics associated with shorter time to NHP; Description of the participants of the study.