Bone Abstracts

Objective: To investigate the relationship of frailty with vitamin D in community dwelling elderly women.

Materials and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was performed on women over 60 years who were not using vitamin D supplementations. Frailty status was defined using Fried’s criteria: weakness, low walking speed, low physical activity, weight loss, exhaustion. Participants were classified as robust, prefrail and frail if they scored 0, 1-2, 3 points, respectively. Vitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration in serum was measured with Cobas E411. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine the association between frailty and vitamin D.

Results: The study was performed on 161 women: 103 (64%) robust, 30 (18.6%) prefrail, 28 (17.4%) frail. In robust women group, mean age was 69.43±6.22 years and vitamin D level – 17.57±8.19 ng/ml. The youngest were robust women (mean age 69.43±6.22 years) and their vitamin D concentration (17.57±8.19 ng/ml) was the highest compared to other groups (P=0.001). The mean age of women in prefrail group was 70.79±7.92 years, vitamin D level – 16.17±6.38 ng/ml. The oldest women were in frail group (75.8±5.98 years) and their vitamin D level was the lowest (13.29±6.15 ng/ml). Unadjusted analysis in frailty vs robust group (reference category – robust) showed that higher levels of vitamin D were associated with being robust (OR: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.85; 0.97; P=0.009). After adjusting for the age, the association between frailty and vitamin D was not statistically significant (P=0.26). However, increasing age was found to be a risk factor of frailty (OR: 1.13, 95% CI: 1.05; 1.21; P=0,001). No statistically significant relationships were found in prefrailty vs robust and prefrailty vs frailty groups.

Conclusion: Unadjusted lower levels of vitamin D are associated with being frailty in elderly women, but after age adjustment the associations were not significant. No associations between vitamin D and prefrailty were found.