• Nurul Fatin Malek Rivan, Suzana Shahar, Nor Fadilah Rajab, Devinder Kaur Ajit Singh, Normah Che Din, Mahadzir Hazlina, and Tengku Aizan Tengku Abdul Hamid.
• Nutritional Sciences Programme and Centre for Healthy Ageing and Wellness (H-CARE), Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• Clin Interv Aging. 2019 Jan 1; 14: 1343-1352.

PurposeThis study was aimed at determining the presence of cognitive frailty and its associated factors among community-dwelling older adults from the "LRGS-Towards Useful Aging (TUA)" longitudinal study.Patients And MethodsThe available data related to cognitive frailty among a sub-sample of older adults aged 60 years and above (n=815) from two states in Malaysia were analysed. In the LRGS-TUA study, a comprehensive interview-based questionnaire was administered to obtain the socio-demographic information of the participants, followed by assessments to examine the cognitive function, functional status, dietary intake, lifestyle, psychosocial status and biomarkers associated with cognitive frailty. The factors associated with cognitive frailty were assessed using a bivariate logistic regression (BLR).ResultsThe majority of the older adults were categorized as robust (68.4%), followed by cognitively pre-frail (37.4%) and cognitively frail (2.2%). The data on the cognitively frail and pre-frail groups were combined for comparison with the robust group. A hierarchical BLR indicated that advancing age (OR=1.04, 95% CI:1.01-1.08, p<0.05) and depression (OR=1.49, 95% CI:1.34-1.65, p<0.001) scored lower on the Activity of Daily Living (ADL) scale (OR=0.98, 95% CI:0.96-0.99, p<0.05), while low social support (OR=0.98, 95% CI:0.97-0.99, p<0.05) and low niacin intake (OR=0.94, 95% CI:0.89-0.99, p<0.05) were found to be significant factors for cognitive frailty. Higher oxidative stress (MDA) and lower telomerase activity were also associated with cognitive frailty (p<0.05).ConclusionOlder age, a lower niacin intake, lack of social support, depression and lower functional status were identified as significant factors associated with cognitive frailty among older Malaysian adults. MDA and telomerase activity can be used as potential biomarkers for the identification of cognitive frailty.

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