Older adults with social frailty — not having strong social connections — have a higher risk for motoric cognitive risk (or MCR, a pre-dementia syndrome), newly published research finds.
The study, published Monday in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, found that social frailty linked to increased MCR was from multiple social factors. The researchers said that clinicians should identify those who are at a higher risk for MCR by evaluating their social frailty.
MCR is a syndrome that occurs before dementia. It can include cognitive complaints and slow gait speed in individuals without dementia or a mobility disability.
As part of the assessment, the team looked at data from 4,657 individuals without MCR from part of the National Health and Aging Trends Study as the discovery sample, as well as 3,075 people in a more recent cohort of the NHATS as the independent validation sample. The mean age was just over 76 years old, and 42.69% of the participants were men.
Social frailty was assessed using five social-related classifications, including going out less, feeling unhelpful to friends/family, rarely visiting friends/family, not having conversations with other people, and not having a live-in partner or spouse. The team defined MCR as the presence of both subjective cognitive complaints and slow gait speed in individuals without dementia or mobility disability.
According to the classifications, 39.0% of the people had presocial frailty, and 51.5% had social frailty; the rest had robust social lives. Over the course of a four-year span, MCR was diagnosed in 10.3% of the people.
People with social frailty had a higher risk of incident MCR compared with those who didn’t experience social frailty. Each of the five social items, or unfavorable parameters, was linked with a 32% higher risk for MCR.
“We found that social frailty was associated with a higher risk of incident MCR, independent of socioeconomic status, lifestyle factors, chronic diseases and mental health,” the authors wrote.
