Association between Frailty Syndrome and Anemia in Community-Dwelling Elderly

Frailty is an important and complex phenomenon in the fields of geriatrics and gerontology and a highly relevant topic. Frailty syndrome (FS) is a multidimensional clinical condition characterized by loss of physiological and cognitive reserves across multiple organ systems. The Fried frailty phenotype is the main model used to categorize FS. Recent studies have shown an association between anemia, low hemoglobin concentration and frailty. This study aimed to assess the association between FS and anemia in community-dwelling elderly. An observational cross-sectional design was used, with 308 elderly subjects. Most participants were women (78.2%) between 60 and 69 years old (50.6%). The average schooling level was 9.7 years. Anemia was detected in 9.7% of participants. The frequency of frailty, pre-frailty and non-frailty was 8.2, 74.0 and 17.8%, respectively. The multivariate ordinal logistic regression model identified low levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) (OR = 0.9, 95% CI = 0.9; 0.9) as risk factor associated with FS. No significant association was found between frailty and anemia. Moreover, FS may be influenced by low schooling levels, despite the non-significant result obtained in the statistical model. These findings contribute to elucidating other factors associated with FS, especially in community-dwelling elderly.