Prevalence, overlap, and interrelationships of physical, cognitive, psychological, and social frailty among community-dwelling older people in Japan

Background The aim of this study is to explore the prevalence and overlap of physical, cognitive, psychological, and social frailty and their negative-interrelationships. Methods We conducted a survey of people aged & GE;75 years in the region with the oldest population in Japan. Frailty was divided into physical, cognitive, psychological, and social frailty, which were evaluated with the Japanese version of the Cardiovascular Health Study (J-CHS) criteria, J-CHS and the Japanese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 and the Lubben Social Network Scale, respectively. Results Of the 268 participants (aged 81.5 & PLUSMN; 4.5 years), 48.1% and 8.6% had physical prefrailty and frailty; 68.3%, 13.0%, and 5.2% had mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and cognitive frailty; 25.7% and 5.2% had depressive mood and depression as psychological frailty; and 7.8% had social frailty, respectively. Path analysis showed that social frailty was associated with psychological frailty. Psychological frailty was associated with physical frailty. Physical frailty was associated with cognitive frailty. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that independent determinants of physical robustness were female sex, age, and psychological robustness (odds ratio (OR) = 2.166, 0.831, 3.625, respectively). Determinants of cognitive robustness were age and psychological robustness (OR = 0.837, 7.079). Determinants of psychological robustness were physical, cognitive, and social robustness (OR = 3.759, 6.829, 5.037), and the determinant of social robustness was psychological robustness (OR = 4.489), respectively. Conclusions We demonstrated the prevalence, overlap, and interrelationships of different types of frailty and clarified the factors that may help to reduce frailty.