Fatigue: Relevance and Implications in the Aging Population.

Fatigue: Relevance and Implications in the Aging Population. Exp Gerontol. 2015 Jul 16; Authors: Zengarini E, Ruggiero C, Pérez-Zepeda MU, Hoogendijk EO, Vellas B, Mecocci P, Cesari M Abstract Frailty has been identified as a promising condition for distinguishing different degrees of vulnerability among older persons. Several operational definitions have proposed fatigue as one of the features characterizing the frailty syndrome. However, such a subjective symptom is still not yet sufficiently explored and understood. Fatigue is a common and distressing self-reported symptom perceived by the person while performing usual mental and physical activities, highly prevalent in older people, and strongly associated to negative health-related events. The understanding of fatigue is hampered by several issues, including the difficulty at objectively operationalizing, the controversial estimates of its prevalence, and the complex pathophysiological mechanisms underlying its manifestation. Despite such barriers, the study of fatigue is important and might be encouraged. Fatigue may be the marker of the depletion of the body's homeostatic reserves to a threshold leading to its psycho-physical functional impairment, mirroring the concept of frailty. Its subjective and symptomatic nature resembles that of other conditions (e.g., pain, depression), which equally affect the individual's quality of life, expose to negative outcomes, and severely b...
Source: Experimental Gerontology - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tags: Exp Gerontol Source Type: research