Age versus Frailty as a Predictor of Mortality

A number of companies and research groups are performing drug discovery by using effects on frailty in mice as a readout. To what degree is frailty an adequate measure of the harms done by aging? One way to answer that question is to assess mortality in a human study population against a measure of frailty, with and without factoring in chronological age. Researchers here show that frailty is a fair marker for age-related mortality, but it is not a reflection of every degenerative, harmful process taking place under the hood. Frailty and age combined provide a better correlation with mortality than frailty alone, indicating that there are aspects of age-related decline that contribute meaningfully to mortality without producing evident frailty. As populations get older, the association between chronological age and health status becomes increasingly heterogeneous. To describe this heterogeneity in health status as we age, the concepts of biological age or frailty versus fitness spectrum have been proposed. The frailty index (FI) methodology was introduced to quantify the accumulation of people's health 'deficits' (i.e., symptoms, clinical signs, medical conditions and disabilities) at a given chronological age. This method has allowed for the establishment of potentially useful population norms and the study of influences of wider determinants of health on the variation in health status within people of a similar chronological age. Since FI deficits increase w...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs