ArticleThe Journal of frailty & aging2025
Differences in the risk of frailty based on care receipt, unmet care needs and socio-economic inequalities: A longitudinal analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
Article in The Journal of frailty & aging, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Interplay between frailty and cardiometabolic disorders: from pathophysiology to clinical implications.Cardiovascular diabetology · 2025Pooled it
- Age equality in UK healthcare policy and decision-making: a scoping review.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Growing up in poverty, growing old in frailty: the life course shaping of health in the United States, England and Europe-a prospective and retrospective study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe older population is increasingly reliant on social care, especially those who are frail. However, an estimated 1.5 million people over 65 in England have unmet care needs. The relationship between receiving care, or receiving insufficient care, and changes in frailty status remains unclear.
objectivesTo investigate the associations between care receipt (paid or unpaid), unmet care needs, frailty status, and mortality.
designWe used multistate models to estimate the risk of increasing or decreasing levels of frailty, using English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) data. Covariates included age, gender, wealth, area deprivation, education, and marital status. Care status was assessed through received care and self-reported unmet care needs, while frailty status was determined using a frailty index.
participants15,003 individuals aged 50+, using data collected over 18 years (2002-2019).
resultsIndividuals who receive care are more susceptible to frailty and are less likely to recover from frailty to a less frail state. The hazard ratio of males receiving care transitioning from prefrailty to frailty was 2.1 [95 % CI: 1.7-2.6] and for females 1.8 [1.5-2.0]. Wealth is an equally influential predictor of changes in frailty status: individuals in the lowest wealth quintile who do not receive care are as likely to become frail as those in the highest wealth quintile who do receive care. As individuals receiving care (including unpaid care) are likely to be in poorer health than those who do not receive care, this highlights stark inequalities in the risk of frailty between the richest and poorest individuals. Unmet care needs were associated with transitioning from prefrailty to frailty for males (hazard ratio: 1.7 [1.2-2.4]) but not for females.
conclusionsIndividuals starting to receive care (paid or unpaid) and people in the poorest wealth quintile are target groups for interventions aimed at delaying the onset of frailty.
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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.