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.