Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; National Center for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy.
J Affect Disord. 2020 May 1;268:183-187. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2020.03.015. Epub 2020 Mar 6.
Serious mental illnesses may be characterized by accelerated biological aging, and over the last years the research on the topic has been stimulated by studies exploring the molecular underpinnings of senescence.
In the present manuscript we propose that measuring frailty, a general product of organismal ageing, through the "Frailty Index" (FI), a recently-emerged macroscopic indicator of functional status and biological age, adds an important marker to the measurements currently implemented in the study of accelerated biological age in psychiatric illnesses.
The FI quantifies functional negative health attributes and measures their cumulative effect, thus providing a useful estimate of the individual's biological age and risk profile. Recent studies in older adults have observed significant associations between FI and molecular measures of aging.
High FI values can be driven by causes different from aging per se, so FI may be a sensitive but not specific measure of biological aging.
FI, which is extensively used in geriatrics and gerontology but it has rarely been used in relation to mental health, may be of relevance in the evaluation of age-related phenomena associated with psychiatric diseases.
严重的精神疾病可能表现为生物衰老加速，近年来，随着探索衰老分子基础的研究的开展，这一领域的研究受到了刺激。
在本文中，我们提出通过“衰弱指数”（FI）来衡量机体衰老的总体产物，即功能状态和生物年龄的新兴宏观指标，可以为目前在精神疾病中加速生物衰老的研究中实施的测量增加一个重要的标记。
FI 量化了功能负健康属性，并衡量了它们的累积效应，从而为个体的生物年龄和风险状况提供了有用的估计。最近在老年人中的研究观察到 FI 与衰老的分子测量之间存在显著关联。
高 FI 值可能由与衰老本身不同的原因驱动，因此 FI 可能是生物衰老的敏感但非特异性指标。
FI 在老年医学和老年学中广泛应用，但与心理健康的关系很少，它可能与与精神疾病相关的与年龄相关的现象的评估有关。
