A Cross-Sectional Study on the Characteristics of Physical Activity in Pre-Frail Older Adults.

Motoaki Takamura,Toshimasa Sone,Nobuaki Moriyama,Seiji Yasumura,Takayuki Kawamura,Reiko Suzuki

doi:10.3390/ijerph182312328

Abstract

This cross-sectional study aimed to characterize the physical activity (PA) of older adults with pre-frail status by examining sedentary behavior (SB) and PA using triaxial accelerometer data, with non-frail older adults as the control group. In this study, we divided the study participants into older adults who regularly participated in self-initiated citizen group exercise activities and those who did not. Data were collected between September and December 2017. We analyzed data from 256 older adults (women: 86.3%) aged ≥65 years. The interaction effect of participation status (participation and non-participation group) and frailty status (pre-frail and non-frail group) for moderate-to-vigorous PA (F = 9.178, p = 0.003) and daily mean number of steps (F = 9.351, p = 0.002) was significant. For the participation group, there was no difference between pre-frail older adults and non-frail older adults regarding length of SB and PA time, indicating that PA level was maintained in the participating pre-frail older adults. In contrast, moderate-to-vigorous PA and daily mean number of steps were low in pre-frail older adults who did not participate in the activities. The opportunity to participate in self-initiated group exercise activities and other PAs in the community may help pre-frail older adults maintain their PA.

Highlights

Recent studies on frailty in older adults have been conducted in a wide range of fields and have examined the physical problems associated with frailty, such as sarcopenia [1,2]and falls [3]
These studies have found that physical frailty in particular is a condition resulting in lifestyle dysfunction caused by a decline in motor function due to aging, and is related to subsequent prognosis, with a high proportion of older adults transitioning to needing support and nursing care [4,5,6] and having increased mortality risk [7,8]
The participants were divided into two groups: those participating in the self-initiated group exercise activities formed the participation group, and those who gathered at the senior club networking events formed the non-participation group

Summary

Introduction

These studies have found that physical frailty in particular is a condition resulting in lifestyle dysfunction caused by a decline in motor function due to aging, and is related to subsequent prognosis, with a high proportion of older adults transitioning to needing support and nursing care [4,5,6] and having increased mortality risk [7,8]. The most widely used definition of frailty is the frailty phenotype proposed by Fried et al [10], using a set of five physical phenotypic components: unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, slow walking speed, and low physical activity with a biological basis. Only a few reports show the findings for older adults in pre-frail status separately from their physical frailty status, Makizako et al [6] report that physical frailty, even when pre-frail, significantly impacts the risk of future disability

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