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Variability in Repeated Blood Pressure Measurements as a Marker of Frailty

  • Published:
The journal of nutrition, health & aging

Abstract

Objectives

Variation in repeated blood pressure measurements may represent a decline in homeostatic mechanisms in blood pressure regulation in response to various internal or external stressors, indicating a frail state. We tested this hypothesis by examining the association between variability in repeated blood pressure measurements (BPV) and frailty status, adjusting for other confounding factors.

Design

A longitudinal cohort study.

Setting

Community centres in all three regions of Hong Kong.

Participants

1156 community-living older adults aged 60 years and over participated in a community geriatric screening program with blood pressure measurements three times a week over one year. Participants were divided into three groups based on variability of repeated blood pressure measurements (low, medium, high) using machine learning methods.

Measurements

Frailty status was assessed using the FRAIL scale. Logistic regression was used to examine cross sectional association between frailty status and BPV adjusting for confounding factors, and also frailty transition with BPV.

Results

In multi-variate models adjusting for co-variates, high BPV was associated with frailty (OR 1.57; 95% CI 1.05-2.37) among all participants; however, this was only significant in women in subgroup analysis. Similar findings were observed when transition to a more frail state was examined over a twelve month period.

Conclusions

The findings of this study support the concept of physiological dysregulation underlying the frail state, and that BPV calculated using machine learning methods may be used as a biomarker of such dysregulation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Jean Woo & R. Yu

  2. CUHK Jockey Club Institute of Ageing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Jean Woo & R. Yu

  3. Stanley Ho Big Data Decision Analytics Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    K. Tsoi & H. Meng

  4. Department of Medicine & Therapeutics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China

    Jean Woo

Authors
  1. Jean Woo
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  2. R. Yu
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  3. K. Tsoi
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  4. H. Meng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jean Woo.

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Woo, J., Yu, R., Tsoi, K. et al. Variability in Repeated Blood Pressure Measurements as a Marker of Frailty. J Nutr Health Aging 22, 1122–1127 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-018-1082-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-018-1082-9

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