ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2021
Clinical Correlates and Implications of the Reliability of the Frailty Index in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review of the utility of the frailty index and frailty phenotype to predict all-cause mortality in older people.Systematic reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Causal association of education attainment with aging and cardiac death: Evidence from Mendelian randomization analysis.Medicine · 2025Article
- Frailty Index Predicts Future All-cause Mortality and Quality of Life: A 2-Year Follow-up Study Among Korean Older Adults From a Population-based Cohort Study.Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe chi · 2025Article
- Does the frailty index applied to randomised controlled trials really measure frailty?Age and ageing · 2025Article
- Determining frailty index thresholds for older people across multiple countries in sub-Saharan Africa.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Health octo tool matches personalized health with rate of aging.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Social Participation on Frailty State Transitions among middle-aged and older adults: evidence from a 10-year prospective study in China.The journal of nutrition, health & aging · 2024Article
- Frailty trajectories preceding dementia: an individual-level analysis of four cohort studies in the United States and United Kingdom.Research square · 2024Article
- Frailty prevalence in 42 European countries by age and gender: development of the SHARE Frailty Atlas for Europe.GeroScience · 2024Article
- Reliability of the Frailty Index Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2024Article
- Frailty and Processing Speed Performance at the Cusp of Midlife in CATSLife.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDeficit accumulation frailty indices (FIs) are widely used to characterize frailty. FIs vary in number and composition of items; the impact of this variation on reliability and clinical applicability is unknown.
methodWe simulated 12 000 studies using a set of 70 candidate deficits in 12 080 community-dwelling participants 65 years and older. For each study, we varied the number (5, 10, 15, 25, 35, 45) and composition (random selection) of items defining the FI and calculated descriptive and predictive estimates: frailty score, prevalence, frailty cutoff, mortality odds ratio, predicted probability of mortality for FI = 0.28 (prevalence threshold), and FI cutoff predicting 10% mortality over the follow-up. We summarized the estimates' medians and spreads (0.025-0.975 quantiles) by number of items and calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs).
resultsMedians of frailty scores were 0.11-0.12 with decreasing spreads from 0.04-0.24 to 0.10-0.14 for 5-item and 45-item FIs. The median cutoffs identifying 15% as frail was 0.19-0.20 and stable; the spreads decreased with more items. However, medians and spreads for the prevalence of frailty (median: 11%-3%), mortality odds ratio (median: 1.24-2.19), predicted probability of mortality (median: 8%-17%), and FI cutoff predicting 10% mortality (median: 0.38-0.20) varied markedly. ICC increased from 0.19 (5-item FIs) to 0.84 (45-item FIs).
conclusionsVariability in the number and composition of items of individual FIs strongly influences their reliability. Estimates using FIs may not be sufficiently stable for generalizing results or direct application. We propose avenues to improve the development, reporting, and interpretation of FIs.
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