Higher Magnesium Intake Is Associated with a Lower Risk of Frailty in Older Adults

Objectives

Magnesium deficiency is common in older adults and has been associated with reduced muscle functionality and several age-related diseases. Evidence of its relationship with frailty is scarce. We aimed to explore the association of magnesium intake with incident frailty in the Seniors-ENRICA-1 cohort.

Design

Prospective longitudinal cohort study.

Setting and Participants

The ENRICA study is a population-based study (N = 13,105) that includes a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized Spanish population aged 18 years and older. For the present analyses, we used data from the community-dwelling participants aged 60 years and older at baseline (n = 2519). After exclusions, we included data from 1900 participants of the Seniors-ENRICA-1 cohort (mean age 68.7 ± 6.4 years; 51.7% women).

Methods

Food consumption was assessed at baseline with a validated, computer-based, face-to-face dietary history (DH-ENRICA), from which magnesium intake was estimated. Frailty was defined as having 3 or more of Fried criteria: exhaustion, low physical activity, slow gait speed, weakness, and weight loss. Analyses were performed with logistic regression adjusted for potential confounders.

Results

During a mean follow-up of 3.5 years, 136 new cases (7.2%) of frailty occurred. Compared with the lowest sex-specific quartile of magnesium intake, the fully adjusted odds ratio (95% CI) for incident frailty across increasing quartiles of intake was 0.62 (0.36, 1.07), 0.53 (0.28, 0.98), and 0.43 (0.21, 0.86), respectively (P-trend = .016). Corresponding results for slow gait speed were 0.68 (0.47, 1.01), 0.58 (0.37, 0.89), and 0.52 (0.32-0.84), respectively (P-trend = .008). Other Fried criteria showed a similar tendency to reduced frailty incidence with increasing magnesium intake, without achieving statistical significance in the fully adjusted model.

Conclusions and Implications

Higher magnesium intake was inversely and independently associated with lower frailty risk, especially of slow gait speed, in community-dwelling older adults, suggesting that adequate intake of this vital ion could help prevent unhealthy aging.