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Counting deficits or diseases? The agreement between frailty and multimorbidity in subjects with cognitive disturbances

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Abstract

In the present study, we explored the relationship between multimorbidity and frailty in a population of older individuals with cognitive disturbances attending a memory clinic. All subjects consecutively attending the Memory Clinic of the Department of Human Neuroscience, “Sapienza” University of Rome, between January 2017 and April 2018 for a first neurological evaluation were considered for the present analysis. Multimorbidity was defined as the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases in the same individual. A Frailty Index was computed by considering 44 age-related, multidimensional health deficits. Overall, 185 subjects were recruited in the study. A condition of multimorbidity was detected in 87.6% of the sample, whereas only the 44.6% of the study population was considered as frail. A poor agreement was observed between multimorbidity and frailty. The present findings confirm that counting diseases or health deficits may provide discordant information concerning the risk profile of older subjects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Neuroscience, “Sapienza” University, Viale dell’Università 30, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Marco Canevelli, Riccardo Raganato, Francesca Remiddi, Federica Quarata, Martina Valletta & Giuseppe Bruno

  2. Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milan, Italy

    Matteo Cesari

  3. Geriatric Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Matteo Cesari

Authors
  1. Marco Canevelli
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  2. Riccardo Raganato
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  3. Francesca Remiddi
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  4. Federica Quarata
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  5. Martina Valletta
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  6. Giuseppe Bruno
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  7. Matteo Cesari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Canevelli.

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Conflict of interest

Marco Canevelli is supported by a research grant of the Italian Ministry of Health (GR-2016-02364975) for the project “Dementia in immigrants and ethnic minorities living in Italy: clinical-epidemiological aspects and public health perspectives” (ImmiDem). Matteo Cesari has received honoraria for presentations at scientific meetings and/or research funding from Nestlé and Pfizer. He is involved in the coordination of an Innovative Medicines Initiative-funded project [including partners from the European Federation Pharmaceutical Industries and Associates (Sanofi, Novartis, Servier, GSK, Lilly)]. The other authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Statement of human and animal rights

All procedures performed in our study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.

Informed consent

Patients and caregivers (or legal guardians when necessary) provided their written informed consent for allowing the utilization of the collected data for research purposes (as required by the local Ethics Committee). Data used in the present analyses were exclusively retrieved from medical charts where information was recorded as part of the standard clinical routine.

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Canevelli, M., Raganato, R., Remiddi, F. et al. Counting deficits or diseases? The agreement between frailty and multimorbidity in subjects with cognitive disturbances. Aging Clin Exp Res 32, 179–182 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-019-01161-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-019-01161-2

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