Frailty in Older Adults with Mild Dementia: Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Alzheimer’s Disease

Introduction: The aim of the study is to describe the frequency of frailty in people with a new diagnosis of mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Methods: This is a secondary analysis of the Dementia Study of Western Norway (Demvest). For this study, we...

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Published inDementia and geriatric cognitive disorders extra Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 176 - 183
Main Authors Borda, Miguel Germán, Soennesyn, Hogne, Steves, Claire J., Osland Vik-Mo, Audun, Pérez-Zepeda, Mario Ulises, Aarsland, Dag
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel, Switzerland S. Karger AG 01.01.2019
Karger Publishers
Subjects
Accuracy
Alzheimer's disease
Caregivers
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Consortia
Dementia
Dementia with Lewy bodies
Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease
Family medical history
Frailty
Geriatrics
Neurology
Older people
Original Research Article
Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease
Frailty
Dementia with Lewy bodies
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Summary:Introduction: The aim of the study is to describe the frequency of frailty in people with a new diagnosis of mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Methods: This is a secondary analysis of the Dementia Study of Western Norway (Demvest). For this study, we analysed a sample of 186 patients, 116 with AD and 70 with DLB. Subjects were included at a time in which mild dementia was diagnosed according to consensus criteria after comprehensive standardized assessment. Frailty was evaluated retrospectively using a frailty index generated from existing data. The cut-off value used to classify an older adult as frail was 0.25. Results: The prevalence of frailty was 25.81% (n = 48). In the DLB group, 37.14% (n = 26) were classified as frail, compared to 18.97% (n = 22) of those with AD (p < 0.001). The adjusted multivariate analysis revealed an OR of 2.45 (1.15–5.23) for being frail in those with DLB when using AD as the reference group. Conclusion: Frailty was higher than expected in both types of dementia. The prevalence of frailty was higher in those with DLB compared to AD. This new finding underscores the need for a multi-systems approach in both dementias, with a particular focus on DLB.
ISSN:1664-5464
1664-5464
DOI:10.1159/000496537