Study finds midlife obesity linked to heightened frailty risk in older age

Carrying far too much weight, including a midriff bulge, from mid-life onwards, is linked to a heightened risk of physical frailty in older age, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The researchers drew on participants in the population based Tromsø Study to find out whether general (BMI) and abdominal (waist circumference) obesity separately and jointly, might affect the risk of pre-frailty/frailty. The final analysis included 4509 people aged 45 or older.

By 2015-16, 28% of participants were pre-frail, 1% were frail, and 70.5% were strong. In all, nearly 51% of those who were strong and 55% of those categorised as pre-frail were women.

With the exception of co-existing conditions, such as diabetes, potentially influential factors, including alcohol intake and smoking, educational attainment, marital status, social support, and physical activity levels differed significantly between the strong and pre-frail/frail groups and were accounted for in the analysis.

Those who were obese in 1994, assessed by BMI alone, were nearly 2.5 times more likely to be pre-frail/frail at the end of the monitoring period than those with a normal BMI. Similarly, those with a moderately high or high waist circumference, to start off with, were, respectively, 57% and twice as likely, to be pre-frail/frail than those with a normal waistline.

Those who started off with a normal BMI but moderately-high waist circumference, or who were overweight but had a normal waistline, weren’t significantly more likely to be pre-frail/frail at the end of the monitoring period. But those who were both obese and who had a moderately-high waist circumference at the start of the monitoring period were.

Higher odds of pre-frailty/frailty were also observed among those who put on weight and among those whose waistlines expanded than in those whose weight and waistlines remained the same throughout.

Reference:

Body mass index, waist circumference and pre-frailty/frailty: the Tromsø study 1994−2016 doi 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065707,Journal: BMJ Open