Multiple somatic symptoms and frailty: cross-sectional study in Japanese community-dwelling elderly people.

Physical frailty is relevant to adverse outcomes, but appropriate procedures for screening populations are lacking. We hypothesized that frailty is associated with multiple somatic symptoms because frail elderly people might have several somatic symptoms attributed to deterioration of multiple organs. To examine the association between multiple somatic symptoms and frailty. We conducted a cross-sectional study and enrolled 1818 participants aged ≥60 years from Japanese national medical check-up in 2015. Frailty status was categorized into frail, pre-frail or non-frail based on the definition of the Fried frailty phenotype model. Sixteen self-reported subjective somatic symptoms were recorded at the timing of medical check-up. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of frail or pre-frail were analyzed using number of somatic symptoms. Out of total of 1818 subjects, 44 (2.4%) frail subjects, 635 (34.9%) pre-frail subjects and 1139 (62.7%) non-frail subjects were detected. More than two somatic symptoms were significantly associated with the frail phenotype (OR 6.20, 95% CI 2.95, 13.03, P < 0.001) and were associated with the pre-frail phenotype (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.69, 2.51, P < 0.001). Associations remained significant after multi-adjustment for age, sex, past medical cardiovascular diseases and depressive mood The number of somatic symptoms ≥2 was thought to be the optimal cut-off point to predict frail with a sensitivity of 79.6%, specificity of 61.5%. Our study shows that multiple somatic symptoms are independently associated with frailty. Using more than two multiple somatic symptoms as a prescreening tool for frailty may be appropriate.

Yamanashi H ，Shimizu Y ，Koyamatsu J ，Nobuyoshi M ，Nagayoshi M ，Kadota K ，Tamai M ，Maeda T ... -  《-》

Association between comprehensive health literacy and frailty level in community-dwelling older adults: A cross-sectional study in Japan.

The present study explored the association between comprehensive health literacy and frailty level in community-dwelling older adults in Japan. This was a cross-sectional study. We enrolled 517 community-dwelling older adults (mean age 73.2 ± 6.3 years; 410 women). We divided the cohort into two groups, non-frail and any-frail, based on Fried Frailty Index scores. We assessed comprehensive health literacy using a 14-item health literacy scale, and classified the participants as having high or low health literacy. We carried out multivariate logistic regression analysis in which the dependent variable was the presence of non-frailty and the independent variable was the presence of high health literacy. The analysis was adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, educational history and cognitive function. There were 132 (25.5%) and 385 (74.5%) participants in the non-frail and any-frail groups, respectively. The analysis showed that high health literacy was independently associated with the non-frail group (odds ratio 1.64, 95% confidence interval 1.03-2.61). The results showed that high health literacy was associated with non-frailty. This result implies that comprehensive health literacy might play a salient role in maintaining good health status in community-dwelling older adults in Japan. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2017; 17: 804-809.

Shirooka H ，Nishiguchi S ，Fukutani N ，Adachi D ，Tashiro Y ，Hotta T ，Morino S ，Nozaki Y ，Hirata H ，Yamaguchi M ，Aoyama T ... -  《-》

Differential association of frailty with cognitive decline and sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults.

Nishiguchi S ，Yamada M ，Fukutani N ，Adachi D ，Tashiro Y ，Hotta T ，Morino S ，Shirooka H ，Nozaki Y ，Hirata H ，Yamaguchi M ，Arai H ，Tsuboyama T ，Aoyama T ... -  《-》

Factors Associated with Physical Frailty in Elderly Women with Low Socioeconomic Status in Urban Communities: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Rensa R ，Setiati S ，Laksmi PW ，Rinaldi I ... -  《-》

Prevalence and Factors Associated with Frailty and Cognitive Frailty Among Community-Dwelling Elderly with Knee Osteoarthritis.

Wanaratna K ，Muangpaisan W ，Kuptniratsaikul V ，Chalermsri C ，Nuttamonwarakul A ... -  《-》