Advancing the definition of cognitive frailty: the association of combined prefrailty and subjective memory complaints (“Cognitive-Prefrailty”) with cognitive performance, physical function and quality of life in community-dwelling older adults

Cognitive frailty is the simultaneous presence of both physical frailty and cognitive impairment, excluding concurrent dementia This condition confers a greater risk of adverse outcomes compared to either condition atone. Despite its importance to the health of the older adult, there is still no consensus on a clinical approach that will feasibly and reliably identify this group of individuals. We propose "cognitive-prefrailtv", a combination of prefrailty and individuals identified by subjective memory complaints,

We will test our hypotheses that: 1) individuals with cognitive-prefrailty will have poorer cognitive performance than physically robust individuals with subjective cognitive complaints, and 2) the subset of cognitive-prefrail individuals with low neuropsychological scores will have the greatest impairment in physical function and quality of life.

We propose a cross-sectional study, enrolling 150 community-dwelling adults With subjective memory complaints aged 260 who attend Senior Activity Centres in Singapore, half of whom are prefrail (i.e. cognitive-prefrail) and the remaining half robust. Cognitive impairment is defined as the presence of subjective memory complaints. Frailty is operationalized using the modified Fried criteria. Cognitive outcomes include neuropsychological tests and Clinical Dementia Rating sum of-boxes scores. Physical performance outcomes include the Short Physical Performance Battery and Frenchay Activities Index. SF•12v2 will be used for assessing health-related quality of life. We will use multiple linear regressions to compare differences in neuropsychological performance and examine interaction and simple effects to determine if cognitive-prefrai[ individuals with the lowest neuropsychological scores have the greatest impairment in physical function and quality of life.