Longitudinal Changes of Cognition and Frailty With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Chinese Older Adults: An 11-Year Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Physical function deterioration is always accompanied by a cognitive decline in older adults. However, evidence is lacking for the long-term simultaneous changing patterns of cognition and physical frailty and their associations with mortality among older adults.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

This study included 8,231 adults aged ≥65 with a baseline and at least one follow-up assessment of both cognition and physical frailty from the 2007-2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. Physical frailty (FRAIL phenotype) and cognition (Mini-Mental State Examination) were applied. Group-based joint trajectory modeling was used to fit the joint trajectories of cognition and physical frailty. Cox proportional hazards model was used to evaluate the trajectory-mortality associations.

RESULTS

Three distinct joint trajectories were identified: (34.4%), (47.0%), and (18.6%). During a median follow-up of 8.3 years, the group, compared to the , had the highest risk for all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR), 3.37 [95% CI: 2.99-3.81]), cardiovascular (CVD) mortality (3.21 [2.08-4.96]) and non-CVD mortality (2.99 [2.28-3.92]), respectively. Joint trajectory was found to be more predictive of mortality as compared to baseline measures of cognition and/or frailty (-statistic ranged from 0.774 to 0.798). Higher changing rates of cognition and frailty were observed among all-cause decedents compared to CVD and non-CVD decedents over a 45-year span (aged 65-110) before death.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Our study suggested that subjects with the worst cognitive decline and severest physical frailty progression were at the highest risk for all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Our findings expand the limited prior knowledge on the dynamic course of cognition and frailty.