Estimation of homeostatic dysregulation and frailty using biomarker variability: a principal component analysis of hemodialysis patients

Increased intraindividual variability in several biological parameters is associated with aspects of frailty and may reflect impaired physiological regulation. As frailty involves a cumulative decline in multiple physiological systems, we aimed to estimate the overall regulatory capacity by applying a principal component analysis to such variability. The variability of 20 blood-based parameters was evaluated as the log-transformed coefficient of variation (LCV) for one year’s worth of data from 580 hemodialysis patients. All the LCVs were positively correlated with each other and shared common characteristics. In a principal component analysis of 19 LCVs, the first principal component (PC1) explained 27.7% of the total variance, and the PC1 score exhibited consistent correlations with diverse negative health indicators, including diabetes, hypoalbuminemia, hyponatremia, and relative hypocreatininemia. The relationship between the PC1 score and frailty was subsequently examined in a subset of the subjects. The PC1 score was associated with the prevalence of frailty and was an independent predictor for frailty (odds ratio per SD: 2.31, P = 0.01) using a multivariate logistic regression model, which showed good discrimination (c-statistic: 0.85). Therefore, the PC1 score represents principal information shared by biomarker variabilities and is a reasonable measure of homeostatic dysregulation and frailty.