Frailty

This chapter discusses the factors involved in the acceleration of the life slope toward the frailty threshold. The backdrop for the development of frailty is the physiological changes of ageing. Diabetes mellitus is classically associated with an increase in frailty, injurious falls, disability, and premature death. Older people develop a physiological anorexia of ageing that is associated with a loss of weight. The best measure of sarcopenia is based on the appendicular skeletal mass as measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, divided by the height in metres squared. The development of sarcopenia and its effect on frailty have been characterised in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans . The causes of frailty are multifactorial. Frailty can have a single cause, such as anaemia; reversal of the anaemia with iron, folate, vitamin B 12 , or erythropoietin will, in this case, reverse frailty.