Number of ideas in spontaneous speech predicts cognitive impairment and frailty in community-dwelling older adults nine years later.

Objective: To investigate the associations between linguistic parameters in spontaneous speech at baseline and cognitive impairment and frailty nine years later.

Methods: A prospective analysis was carried out on data of the Frailty in Brazilian Older People Study (FIBRA) Study, a population-based study on frailty. From a probabilistic sample of 384 individuals aged 65 and older at baseline (2008-2009), 124 aged 73 years and older at follow-up were selected, as they had scored above the cutoff values of cognitive screening for dementia adjusted by years of schooling at baseline and had answered to the question and had no frailty at baseline.