Co-occurrence of cardiometabolic diseases and frailty in older Chinese adults in the Beijing Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Background: all cardiometabolic disorders become more common with age. Frailty and increased vulnerability to adverse outcomes are also common with aging. Even so, how commonly elderly people who are affected by cardiometabolic disorders are also frail remains unclear. Objectives: (i) to evaluate the prevalence of cardiometabolic disorders in relation to frailty. (ii) To estimate to which extent cardiometabolic diseases, when compared with frailty, affects mortality. Methods: this is a secondary analysis of the Beijing Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a population-based representative cohort study (n = 3,257) assembled in 1992 and followed to 2007. The baseline frailty index (FI) considered 35 potential health deficits. People with an FI >0.22 were considered frail. The relationships between frailty and cardiometabolic disorders and mortality outcomes were evaluated using the Cox proportional hazard model, adjusted for baseline age, sex and education. Results: the mean FI was 0.11 in men (SD = 0.10) and 0.14 (SD = 0.11) in women. On average, the FI increased with each cardiometabolic disorder (e.g. in men, mean ± SD = 0.16 ± 0.11 with hypertension, 0.23 ± 0.14 with stroke). As the number of disorders increased, so did the mean FI, and the proportion with the FI >0.22. For each condition, people with the FI >0.22 had a higher mortality, even after adjusting for sex, age and education. Conclusion: cardiometabolic disorders do not occur in isolation and commonly increase not just together, but in the presence of other health deficits. Healthcare providers who work with older adults with such problems need to develop methods to adapt their treatments to the needs of frail older adults.