Psycho-Bio-Social Factors to Drive Frailty: What’s New?

Dear Colleagues,

There is a long history in scientific research targeting frail people and their condition. Indeed, several methods have been applied to accurately assess frailty, including the Frailty Index and the Physical Frailty, which, altogether, contributed significantly to our understanding of this worrying condition. The grouping of several frailty indexes or measures to create a composite score for frailty was a huge improvement in establishing a robust criterium for frailty identification and classification. For example, consider the cognitive frailty (concomitant physical and cognitive declines), which, based on the similarity of the two clinical outcomes, develops a specific method for assessing this phenotypic subgroup. Regardless of several varieties of screen methods, the presence of frailty is associated with a variety of negative outcomes and poor stress tolerance and is a risk factor for the increase of unfavorable health outcomes.

On the other hand, recent evidence indicates that older adults who engage in more physical activity (systematic or not) are less likely to develop frailty and its associated clinical outcomes. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that exercise can reduce and reverse the frailty condition, taking multifactorial interventions into account. From the frailty of biological systems (i.e., immune, neuroendocrine), we move on to the recent emphasis on oral frailty, also highlighting that isolation and loneliness can characterize social frailty.

In this regard, we invite all colleagues to submit studies demonstrating the existence of new ‘Psycho-bio-social’ correlated of frailty. Epidemiological, systematic reviews of any types and interventional studies approaching physical exercise or multifactorial interventions (in combination with exercise) will be appreciated. Research protocol articles will be accepted as long as they present novel study designs for understanding frailty in older populations.

Dr. Guilherme Furtado
Dr. André Luis Lacerda Bachi
Prof. Dr. Marcelo Barros
Guest Editors

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• frailty
• active lifestyle
• older adults
• health status
• multifactorial interventions