Physical Frailty Predicts Incident Depressive Symptoms in Elderly People: Prospective Findings From the Obu Study of Health Promotion for the Elderly

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether frailty is an important and independent predictor of incident depressive symptoms in elderly people without depressive symptoms at baseline. Design: Fifteen-month prospective study. Setting: General community in Japan. Participants: A total of 3025 community-dwelling elderly people aged 65 years or over without depressive symptoms at baseline. Measurements: The self-rated 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale was used to assess symptoms of depression with a score of 6 or more at baseline and 15-month follow-up. Participants underwent a structural interview designed to obtain demographic factors and frailty status, and completed cognitive testing with the Mini-Mental State Examination and physical performance testing with the Short Physical Performance Battery as potential predictors. Results: At a 15-month follow-up survey, 226 participants (7.5%) reported the development of depressive symptoms. We found that frailty and poor self-rated general health (adjusted odds ratio 1.86, 95% confidence interval 1.30-2.66, P < .01) were independent predictors of incident depressive symptoms. The odds ratio for depressive symptoms in participants with frailty compared with robust participants was 1.86 (95% confidence interval 1.05-3.28, P = .03) after adjusting for demographic factors, self-rated general health, behavior, living arrangements, Mini-Mental State Examination, Short Physical Performance Battery, and Geriatric Depression Scale scores at baseline. Conclusions: Our findings suggested that frailty and poor self-rated general health were independent predictors of depressive symptoms in community-dwelling elderly people. (C) 2015 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.