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Sex Differences in Frailty Incidence in Greek Community-Dwelling Older People: The HELIAD Study

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  • Physical Frailty
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Abstract

Background

Previous frailty studies found higher prevalence of frailty in female than in male participants. This was mainly attributed to the fact that compared to men, women show increased longevity. Recent studies have reported that the observed difference between sexes applies irrespectively of the age of older people.

Objectives

To provide data on sex differences in incident frailty by applying both phenotypic and multi-domain frailty measures in the same population of Greek community-dwelling older people.

Design

Longitudinal study.

Setting

Data were drawn from the Hellenic longitudinal Investigation of Aging and Diet (HELIAD), a population-based, multidisciplinary study designed to estimate the prevalence and incidence of dementia in the Greek population.

Participants

1104 participants aged 65 year and above were included in this longitudinal study. This incidence cohort was reevaluated after a mean follow-up period of 3.04±0.90 years.

Measurements

Frailty was operationalized using 5 different definitions in the same population the Fried Frailty Phenotype (FFP) definition, the FRAIL Scale, the Frailty Index (FI), the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) and the Groningen Frailty Index (GFI). Frailty incidence was calculated a) for the whole sample, b) separately for men and women and c) after both age and sex stratification.

Results

Age and sex stratification revealed that irrespective of age and frailty measurement, women showed higher incidence rates of frailty than men. Specifically, frailty seems to be a condition concerning women >65 years old, but when it comes to men, it is more frequent in those aged more than 75 years old. Finally, in relation to overall frailty incidence and comparing our results to previous studies, we detected a lower frailty incidence in the Greek population.

Conclusions

Differences between the two sexes indicate that when exploring the factors that are related to frailty, studies should provide data disaggregated for men and women.

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Funding

Funding: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. It was not supported by any industry. However, HELIAD study was supported by the Grants: IIRG-09-133014 from the Alzheimer’s Association, 189 10276/8/9/2011 from the ESPA-EU program Excellence Grant (ARISTEIA) and the ΔΥ2β/οικ0.51657/14.4.2009 of the Ministry for Health and Social Solidarity (Greece). Costas A. Anastasiou has received financial support from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (MIS: 5001552). N. Scarmeas reports personal fees from Merck Consumer Health, Eisai and NIH unrelated to this manuscript. The sponsors had no role in the design and conduct of the study; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the preparation of the manuscript; or in the review or approval of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nikolaos Scarmeas.

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Conflicts of Interest: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical standard: The HELIAD study has been approved by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Ethics Committee (256/10-05-2021). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Geronikola, N., Zalonis, I., Ntanasi, E. et al. Sex Differences in Frailty Incidence in Greek Community-Dwelling Older People: The HELIAD Study. J Frailty Aging 11, 250–255 (2022). https://doi.org/10.14283/jfa.2022.39

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14283/jfa.2022.39

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