Frailty More Prevalent Among Older Adults With IBD

Older adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are more likely to experience frailty than their peers who do not have IBD, researchers found.

Using nationwide registers in Sweden, the researchers identified a cohort of patients with IBD aged 60 years or older from 2007 to 2016. Those patients were matched to comparators without IBD based on age, sex, place of residency, and calendar year. Frailty was defined using the Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS). For those patients in the IBD cohort, the associations between frailty risk and hospitalizations or mortality was calculated using Cox proportional hazards modeling.

There was a total of 10,590 patients with IBD included (52% female, mean age 71 years), with 103,398 population-based comparators. Among the IBD cohort, 39% had no risk for frailty, 49% had low risk, and 12% were determined to be at higher risk. The mean HFRS for those patients with IBD was 1.9,  vs 0.9 in the comparator cohort (P < 0.01).

Patients with IBD at higher risk for frailty also had a 20% greater risk for mortality at 3 years when compared to those patients who were not frail. The authors wrote, “Compared to non-frail older patients with IBD, patients at higher risk for frailty had increased mortality (HR:3.22, 95%confidence interval (CI): 2.86–3.61), all-cause hospitalization (HR:2.42,95%CI: 2.24–2.61) and IBD-related hospitalization (HR: 1.50,95%CI: 1.35–1.66). These associations were not attenuated after adjusting for comorbidities.”

Frailty was more prevalent in older patients with IBD, and was also associated with an increased risk for hospitalization and morality for those patients.

—Allison Casey

Reference:
Kochar B, Jylhävä J, Söderling J. Prevalence and implications of frailty in older adults with incident inflammatory bowel diseases: A nationwide cohort study. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. Published online: January 5, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cgh.2022.01.001