Investigating Frailty, Polypharmacy, Malnutrition, Chronic Conditions, and Quality of Life in Older Adults: Large Population-Based Study
Authors: Liu Yunmei , Huang Lei , Hu Fei , Zhang Xiuwen 
Published: August 2024

Background

Aging, a significant public health issue, is associated with multiple concurrent chronic diseases and aging-related conditions (geriatric syndromes).

Objective

This study aims to investigate the impact of age and chronic conditions on geriatric syndromes and the intercorrelations between multiple geriatric syndromes and quality of life (QoL) in older adults (aged ≥65 years) at the population level.

Methods

A large representative sample was randomly selected from a county in China, Feidong, with 17 towns and 811,867 residents. Multiple chronic conditions, geriatric syndromes (frailty, polypharmacy, and malnutrition), and QoL were assessed and compared. Associations of demographic information and chronic conditions with geriatric conditions and QoL in older adults were assessed using multivariable-adjusted logistic regression. Intercorrelations between age, multiple geriatric syndromes, and QoL were investigated using both correlation analysis and restricted cubic splines–based multivariable-adjusted dose-response analysis.

Results

Older adults comprised 43.42% (3668/8447) of the entire study population. The prevalence of frailty, premalnutrition or malnutrition, polypharmacy, and impaired QoL (median age 73, IQR 69-78 years; 1871/3668, 51% men) was 8.26% (303/3668), 15.59% (572/3668), 3.22% (118/3668), and 10.8% (396/3668), respectively. Different age and sex subgroups mostly had similar prevalence of geriatric syndromes (except that frailty occurred more often with older age). Premalnutrition or malnutrition were associated with a lower frequency of obesity and a higher frequency of constipation, polypharmacy with a higher frequency of diabetes and constipation, frailty with a higher frequency of constipation and hernia, and impaired QoL with a higher frequency of hypertension, diabetes, physical disability, and constipation. Mini Nutritional Assessment–Short Form, Groningen Frailty Indicator, and EQ-5D-5L scores, as well as the number of medications used, mostly predicted each other and QoL. Impaired QoL was associated with a higher frequency of frailty, premalnutrition or malnutrition, and polypharmacy, and frailty with a higher frequency of premalnutrition or malnutrition and polypharmacy. At a 1.5-year follow-up, impaired QoL was linked to polypharmacy and frailty at baseline, premalnutrition or malnutrition and polypharmacy were associated with frailty at baseline, and frailty was linked to both premalnutrition or malnutrition and polypharmacy at baseline. Causal mediation analyses showed that frailty mediated the link between polypharmacy and worse QoL and that polypharmacy mediated the link between frailty and worse QoL.

Conclusions

In this large population-based study of older adults, multiple chronic conditions were associated with ≥1 of the investigated geriatric syndromes. Geriatric syndromes were mostly intercorrelated with, and well predictive of, each other and QoL; and causal relationships existed between geriatric syndromes and QoL, with other geriatric syndromes being mediators. The findings might be biased by residual confounding factors. It is important to perform personalized geriatric syndrome assessments stratified by chronic condition; active prevention of, or intervention for, any syndrome might help to reduce the others and improve QoL.