Association of midlife obesity and cardiovascular risk with old age frailty: a 26-year follow-up of initially healthy men.

OBJECTIVE AND HYPOTHESIS: To investigate whether old age frailty is predicted by midlife overweight/obesity and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

DESIGN: Longitudinal observational study (the Helsinki Businessmen Study).

SUBJECTS: In their midlife in 1974, 1815 initially healthy men (mean age 47 years) were clinically investigated, whereupon their weight status (normal weight < 25 kg m(-2), overweight 25 ≤ body mass index <30 kg m(-2) and obese ≥ 30 kg m(-2)), CVD risk factors and a composite risk score (%) of coronary artery disease (CAD) were assessed. After a 26-year follow-up in 2000, when 425 men had died, the frailty status of survivors (80.9%, n=1125, mean age 73 years) was assessed using a postal questionnaire including the RAND-36/SF-36 instrument. Phenotypic criteria were used to define frailty, and according to these criteria, 40.0% (n=450), 50.4% (n=567) and 9.6% (n=108) were classified as not frail, prefrail and frail, respectively. Risks are presented as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

RESULTS: Compared with normal weight, the development of frailty was significantly higher among those men who were overweight or obese in midlife, with fully adjusted ORs (95% CI) of 2.06 (1.21-3.52) and 5.41 (1.94-15.1), respectively. Even the development of prefrailty was significantly increased with midlife overweight (OR 1.39; 95% CI, 1.03-1.87) and obesity (OR 2.96; 95% CI, 1.49-5.88). Age-adjusted composite CAD score in midlife predicted similarly 26-year total mortality (OR per 1% increase:1.16; 95% CI, 1.08-1.24) and development of frailty (OR 1.16; 95% CI, 1.02-1.33).

CONCLUSION: Overweight/obesity and higher CAD risk in midlife were associated with frailty 26 years later. Preventing old age frailty should be recognized as an important goal of obesity and CVD risk control.