Joint predictability of physical frailty/pre-frailty and subjective memory complaints on mortality risk among cognitively unimpaired older adults

The aim of the present study was to investigate how frailty/pre-frailty in combination with subjective memory complaints predicts all-cause mortality in community dwelling cognitively unimpaired older adults. There were 1904 community-dwelling cognitively unimpaired persons aged 65 years or older who participated in the 2013 Taiwan National Health Interview Survey with a 5-year follow-up. Frailty was determined based on the fatigue, resistance, ambulation, illness, and loss of weight (FRAIL) scale. Two questions (“Do you have difficulties with your memory or attention?” and “Do you have difficulties with your memory only or attention only or both?”) were used to screen for subjective memory complaints (SMC). In this study, 11.9% of participants had both frailty/pre-frailty and SMC. A total of 239 deaths were recorded after 9009.5 person-years of follow-up. After adjustment for other factors, compared with participants who were physically robust with no SMC, participants who reported either SMC alone (HR = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.60–1.27) or were frail/pre-frail alone (HR = 1.32, 95% CI = 0.90–1.92) had no significantly increased mortality risk. However, coexisting frailty/pre-frailty and SMC was associated with a significantly increased hazard ratio for mortality of 1.48 (95% CI = [1.02–2.16]). Our results highlight the high prevalence of co-occurring frailty/pre-frailty and SMC and that this co-occurrence is associated with an increased risk of mortality among cognitively unimpaired older adults.