Correlation between frailty status and white matter hyperintensity in elderly patients with leukoaraiosis / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate frailty status of the elderly patients with leukoaraiosis (LA) and to analyze the correlation between white matter hyperintensities and their frailty status.Methods:From June 2019 to September 2020, a total of 162 patients with leukoaraiosis over 65 years old were screened by cranial MRI.The Fried frailty phenotype was used to evaluate their frailty status.The Fazekas scale scoring method was used to independently assess the periventricular white matter hyperintense (PVH) and deep white matter hyperintense (DWMH) by the cranial MRI images.SPSS 22.0 software was used for statistical analysis.ANOVA test was used to compare normal distribution data between groups, and Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to compare non-normal distribution data between groups.Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between PVH and DWMH scores and Fried frailty phenotype score. Results:Among 162 elderly patients with leukoaraiosis, 46 patients (28.40%) were non-frailty, 76 patients (46.91%)were pre-frailty and 40 patients (24.69%) were frailty.There were statistically significant differences in age( F=9.382, P<0.01), number of chronic diseases( H=10.736, P<0.01), number of medication ( H=15.927, P<0.01) and mini-nutritional assessment short form (MNA-SF) scores( F=5.263, P<0.01) among older LA patients with different frailty phenotype.There was statistical difference in PVH scores in elderly LA patients with different frailty phenotype (χ 2=108.537, P<0.01), but no significant difference in DWMH scores (χ 2=4.239, P>0.05). Spearman correlation analysis showed significant positive correlation between PVH score and frailty phenotype score in elderly LA patients ( r=0.718, P<0.001). Conclusion:Elderly LA patients have a high incidence of frailty, which may be related to aging, multi-disease coexistence, multiple medication, nutritional risk and other factors.The occurrence of weakness in elderly LA patients is related to periventricular white matter lesions, and the more serious the white matter damage, the more obvious the degree of frailty.