Association between frailty and incident risk of disability in community-dwelling elder people: evidence from a meta-analysis

Frailty is considered to be one of the risk factors of disability. However, the results of original reported studies are not consistent with respect to the frailty and incidence of disability, and previously published meta-analyses have also shown inconsistent results. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between the different stages of frailty and the incidence of disability by examining updated overall trends in community-dwelling elders. Cohort studies in English or Chinese based on associations between frailty and incident disability risks that were published from 2000 until the current date were researched using PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and CENTRAL databases. The Q test and I2 statistic were used to examine between-study heterogeneity. Random-effect models were adopted to synthesize the results based on the study heterogeneity. Subgroup analyses were also conducted to explore the possible sources of between-study heterogeneity based on the characteristics of participants. Eighteen cohort studies with 88,906 participants were included in our meta-analyses. Compared with the non-frailty category, the combined relative risks (RRs) (95% confidence interval [CI]) of the disability were 1.66 (1.49–1.85) and 2.53 (2.01–3.14) for the category of prefrailty and frailty, respectively. Results suggested that the incident risk of disability at follow-up times