Relationships of inflammatory indexes with frailty and early stage of frailty

Objective  To explore the relationships of inflammatory markers with frailty and early stage of frailty.

Methods  A cross-sectional survey was used to investigate the patients hospitalized in the Department of Geriatric Medicine of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital from March 2021 to November 2021, and the related data was summarized.Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the association of inflammatory indicators of blood routine with frailty and its early stage.

Results  Of 194 subjects, 70 (36.08%) were non-frailty patients (normal group), 45 (23.20%) were pre-frailty patients (pre-frailty group), and 79 (40.72%) were frailty patients (frailty group).There were no significant differences in gender, age and course of disease among patients without frailty, patients with pre-frailty and patients with frailty (P>0.05).Univariate Logistic regression analysis showed that taking the pre-frailty group as the reference group, the neutrophil count and C-reactive protein(CRP) were correlated with frailty; taking the normal group as the reference group, the white blood cell count, neutrophil count and C-reactive protein were correlated with frailty.Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that CRP was associated with frailty when the normal group was taken as the reference group.

Conclusion  The inflammatory index CRP is associated with frailty and its early stages, and is expected to be an inflammatory marker for frailty identification.