AUTHOR=Huang Yafang , Guo Xiangyu , Du Juan , Liu Yanli 

TITLE=Associations Between Intellectual and Social Activities With Frailty Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults in China: A Prospective Cohort Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.693818

DOI=10.3389/fmed.2021.693818

ISSN=2296-858X

ABSTRACT=Background
Frailty is one of the most important global health challenges. We aimed to examine the associations between frequency of intellectual and social activities with frailty among community-dwelling older adults in China.
Methods
This is a prospective analysis of older adults (aged≥60) who had intellectual and social activity data and were free of frailty from the national representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The exposure was frequency of intellectual and social activities. Frailty was measured by frailty index (FI) and defined as FI ≥ 0.25. The incident of frailty was followed-up for 2 years. We estimated the relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using log-linear binominal regression adjusting for potential confounders.
Results
We documented 655 frailty cases over the past 2 years. Participants who had frequent intellectual activities had a lower frailty risk as compared with participants who did not have intellectual activity (adjusted RR=0.65, 95%CI 0.47-0.90). The adjusted RRs were 0.51 (95%CI 0.33-0.77) for participants who did not have slip or fall accident and 1.06 (95%CI 0.65-1.75) for participants who had experienced slip and fall accidents (P=0.01 for interaction). Frequent social activities were not associated with a significant decrease in frailty risk as compared with participants who did not have social activity (adjusted RR=0.93, 95%CI 0.78-1.12).
Conclusions
This observational study showed that frequent intellectual activities were associated with decreased frailty risks. The association was likely to be stronger in participants without slip or fall accident. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm this observational finding.