ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Frailty markers comprise blood metabolites involved in antioxidation, cognition, and mobility.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 112 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
112 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 156 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of Ergothioneine in cognition and age-related neurodegenerative disease: a systematic review.Inflammopharmacology · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Serum metabolomic signatures associated with frailty-related phenotypes in a cohort of older people.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Validation and refinement of a biomarker panel for frailty assessment and prediction of muscle weakness in older adults.npj aging · 2026Article
- Association between whole-blood NAD+ concentration and frailty in community-dwelling older adults: the Itabashi Longitudinal Study on Aging.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Plants synthesize ergothioneine, showing a link to abiotic stress.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- A metabolomic clock of population ageing: cross-cohort validation and associations with frailty and cognitive function.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Association of Frailty and Its Trajectories With the Risk of Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome Progression: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.Geriatrics & gerontology international · 2026Article
- Comparison of Electronic Health Data-Based Frailty Assessment Tools for Prediction of Adverse Outcomes of Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease.Nephrology (Carlton, Vic.) · 2026Article
- Is Ergothioneine an Important Source of Plasma TrimethylamineAntioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The application value of frailty assessment tools in the perioperative period: A narrative review.Journal of anesthesia and translational medicine · 2026Review
- Potential Protection Against Parkinson's Disease by Ergothioneine-Nature's Multifactorial Neuroprotectant.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Ergothioneine as a potential protective agent against macular degeneration and other eye disorders.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Biomarkers of oxidative damage as a tool to investigate frailty syndrome in older women.npj aging · 2026Article
- Efficacy of silicon-based agent against aging-related frailty.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The metabolites for muscle and osteoclast activity are indicators of femoral neck osteoporosis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- An integrative approach to detecting potential blood-based biomarkers of cognitive frailty.The journal of nutrition, health & aging · 2026Observational
- Association between frailty and cognitive function in hospitalized older adults: a moderated serial mediation analysis involving functional status, depression, and social support.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
52 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As human society ages globally, age-related disorders are becoming increasingly common. Due to decreasing physiological reserves and increasing organ system dysfunction associated with age, frailty affects many elderly people, compromising their ability to cope with acute stressors. Frail elderly people commonly manifest complex clinical symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction, hypomobility, and impaired daily activity, the metabolic basis of which remains poorly understood. We applied untargeted, comprehensive LC-MS metabolomic analysis to human blood from 19 frail and nonfrail elderly patients who were clinically evaluated using the Edmonton Frail Scale, the MoCA-J for cognition, and the TUG for mobility. Among 131 metabolites assayed, we identified 22 markers for frailty, cognition, and hypomobility, most of which were abundant in blood. Frailty markers included 5 of 6 markers specifically related to cognition and 6 of 12 markers associated with hypomobility. These overlapping sets of markers included metabolites related to antioxidation, muscle or nitrogen metabolism, and amino acids, most of which are decreased in frail elderly people. Five frailty-related metabolites that decreased-1,5-anhydroglucitol, acetyl-carnosine, ophthalmic acid, leucine, and isoleucine-have been previously reported as markers of aging, providing a metabolic link between human aging and frailty. Our findings clearly indicate that metabolite profiles efficiently distinguish frailty from nonfrailty. Importantly, the antioxidant ergothioneine, which decreases in frailty, is neuroprotective. Oxidative stress resulting from diminished antioxidant levels could be a key vulnerability for the pathogenesis of frailty, exacerbating illnesses related to human aging.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.