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Smoking increases risk for frailty in elderly patients

Compared with nonsmokers, smokers were significantly more likely to develop frailty, according to 4-year data recently published in Age and Ageing.

“Smoking is the single most preventable cause of morbidity and mortality,” Gotaro Kojima, MD, of the department of primary care and population health at the University College London, and colleagues wrote. Despite this, they added, “The evidence on independent associations between smoking in later life and incident frailty is scarce.”

To gather more data, researchers determined the smoking status of 2,542 community dwelling residents in England aged 60 years and older. They also determined frailty with the modified Fried criteria.

Overall, the 261 current smokers had lower BMI, were less educated, younger, significantly frailer, lonelier and less wealthy compared with nonsmokers at baseline.

Kojima and colleagues used multivariable logistic regression models that adjusted for sex and age. At 4 year follow-up, current smokers were twice as likely to develop frailty compared with nonsmokers (OR = 2.07; 95% CI, 1.39-3.39); controlling for socioeconomic status largely attenuated this association, according to researchers.

In addition, researchers found smoking remained significantly associated with incident frailty in fully adjusted models including age, alcohol use, cognitive function, loneliness, sex and socioeconomic status (OR = 1.6; 95% CI, 1.02-2.51).

“Our findings are consistent with the limited previous longitudinal research, which has shown in the majority of studies that smoking worsened subsequent frailty status except for one study,” Kojima and colleagues wrote.

“Given that smoking is a modifiable lifestyle factor, smoking cessation may potentially prevent or delay developing frailty,” they concluded. – by Janel Miller

 Disclosures: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.