Associations between Commonly Used Characteristics in Frailty Assessment and Mental State in Frail Elderly People

This paper presents a cross-sectional study to analyze the impact on cognitive decline of a set of characteristics used for frailty assessment in elderly people. Considered characteristics come from several dimensions, including anthropometric, biological, nutritional, functional and mobility. Cognitive functioning is estimated by the Mini-Mental State Examination test. Additionally, mobility dimension is assessed from two perspectives: one based on direct observation of ambulation through subjective gait analyses; and the other performing explicit gait trials by using the instrumentation provided. In order to accomplish the purpose of this research, a multiple logistic regression analysis is carried out. Variables are grouped according to popular and/or standardized categories adopted in other clinical studies. Mini-Mental State Examination represents the dependent variable, while the characteristics for frailty assessment make up the set of explanatory variables. The multiple logistic regression is performed using a sample of 81 frail elders from two nursing homes in Spain. The results obtained indicate that frail elders aged 90 years of older, with moderate dependence in daily functioning, moderate risk of falls and with a stride interval gait variability greater than 6% were most likely to suffer cognitive decline, representing what is called cognitive frails