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Frailty and Resilience

Frailty is a multi-factorial biologic syndrome related to the ageing process. It describes how the body gradually loses its in-built reserves, leaving one vulnerable to dramatic, sudden changes in health status, triggered by seemingly small events, such as a minor infection or a change in medication or environment. Frail individuals have a higher risk for disability, falls, cognitive decline, admission to hospital, and/or the need for long-term care. Although a recognized and common phenomenon in ageing, frailty is difficult to accurately define and diagnose, with current methods lacking the sensitivity to detect subtle signs of the early onset of frailty.

Within the TILDA Frailty Working Group, we utilise this nationally representative and longitudinal study of community-living people aged 50 and over to explore the determinants, progression, and consequences of frailty. The group is leading the way towards the development of new methods and devices that will help clinicians identify frailty, with projects such as FRAILMatics taking a multidisciplinary approach to explore innovative ways to detect subtle signs of frailty early. FRAILMatics leverages the latest cutting-edge supercomputers to perform novel analyses of the large TILDA dataset, investigating multi-system dysregulation across cardiovascular, locomotive, and neurocognitive domains.

If those who are in the early stages of frailty can be identified and undergo interventions to improve their resilience, then better outcomes will be achieved for the patients, treatment providers and healthcare systems generally. We see frailty research encompassing not only the physiological level of analysis, but also the biomedical and policy-relevant aspects.

TILDA's Frailty and Resilience Working Group is currently co-chaired by Prof. Roman Romero-Ortuno (romeroor@tcd.ie) and Dr. Siobhan Scarlett (sscarlet@tcd.ie).

TILDA Researchers

Roman Romero-Ortuno

Professor Roman Romero-Ortuno is an Associate Professor in Medical Gerontology at Trinity College Dublin and a Consultant Physician in St. James's Hospital, Dublin.

Prof. Ortuno works closely with The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA, and is a Faculty member of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) where he brings clinical and academic experience in frailty, dementia, delirium and comprehensive geriatric assessment.

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TILDA Researchers

Siobhan Scarlett

Dr Siobhan Scarlett is a Research Fellow with TILDA, currently working within the FRAILMATICS research program and as Senior Data Manager at TILDA.

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TILDA Researchers

Aisling O’Halloran

Dr Aisling O’Halloran the research lead on both the Frailty and Biomarker Working Groups within TILDA and also manages the TILDA Biobank, the largest of its kind in the Rep. of Ireland.

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TILDA Researchers

Silvin Knight

Dr Silvin Knight is a Research Fellow with TILDA, currently working within the FRAILMATICS research program.

His current research interests include quantitative modelling of cardiovascular and neurovascular haemodynamics and autoregulation, as well as developing machine learning and data-driven approaches for the analysis of these vascular networks.

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