The physical phenotype of frailty for risk stratification of older medical inpatients.

Objectives: To determine the usefulness of physical phenotype of frailty, cognitive impairment, and serum albumin for risk stratification of elderly medical impatients.

Design: Prospective, observational cohort study.

Setting: A general internal medicine unit of a university hospital in Italy.

Metabolic syndrome and all-cause mortality in older men and women.

Background: Prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) increases with age, but its association with all-cause mortality in older persons remains uncertain. This study investigated the association of all-cause mortality with MetS and its individual components in older men and women.

Methods: A total of 917 men and 1043 women aged 65 years and older from two Italian population-based cohorts were included in the study.

Serum dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and adverse health outcomes in older men and women.

Low serum dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) is common in older persons with poor health. The geriatric syndrome of physical frailty is associated with a higher risk of developing fatal and nonfatal health outcomes. However, the association of DHEAS with frailty is uncertain.

Serum thyroid-stimulating hormone as a predictor of cognitive impairment in an elderly cohort.

Background: It is unclear whether in late life serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) predicts risk of developing cognitive impairment.

Objective: This study investigated the prospective relationship of serum TSH with the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) in an elderly cohort with a 4-year follow-up.

Methods: Data are for 660 subjects aged 65 years and older from an Italian population-based cohort who were cognitively normal at an extensive assessment in 1999/2000 and underwent follow-up assessment in 2003/2004.

A comparison of frailty indexes for prediction of adverse health outcomes in an elderly cohort.

This study aimed to compare the predictive accuracy for several frailty-related adverse health outcomes of a cumulative index derived from the Italian population-based elderly cohort of the Conselice Study of Brain Aging (CSBA), which takes into account multiple different domains (demographic, clinical, functional, and nutritional parameters), with that of an index derived from the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF), modified for application to the CSBA database and henceforth called mSOF, which is exclusively focused on muscular fitness. Data are for 1007 CSBA participants aged ≥ 65 years. Investigated adverse outcomes included 4- and 7-year risk of death and 4-year risk of fractures, falls, disability, hospitalization, and nursing home placement.