Exercise and/or Dietary Varieties and Incidence of Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Women: A 2-Year Cohort Study

Exercise and dietary habits rich in variety may reduce the risk of frailty incident, but such association remains unexamined. This study aimed to examine the longitudinal associations between exercise and/or dietary varieties and incidence of frailty in older women.

A 2-year population-based prospective cohort study.

Six hundred and four community-dwelling older Japanese women aged ≥75 years with non-frailty at baseline survey.

Frailty was assessed using Fried’s frailty criteria composed of shrinking, weakness, slowness, low activity, and exhaustion at both baseline and follow-up surveys. Frailty incident was defined as the presence of =3 components at the follow-up survey. At baseline, information about exercise and dietary habits were obtained from all participants through a face-to-face interview. Participants were grouped into two categories, high (=2) and low (<2) exercise varieties, assessed by the number of participations in 17 exercise types. By dietary variety, assessed using Dietary Variety Score (range, 0 to 10), participants were grouped into two, high (=4 points) and low (<4 points) dietary varieties. Binary logistic regression analyses were applied to obtain adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confident intervals (CIs) of the incidence of frailty in the 4 groups (low-exercise and low-dietary varieties [low EV + low DV] as reference; low-exercise and high-dietary varieties [low EV + high DV]; high-exercise and low-dietary varieties [high EV + low DV]; and high-exercise and high-dietary varieties [high EV + high DV]).

Frailty incidence rate was 9.3% over the 2-year follow-up period. Incidence rates of frailty in the 4 groups were as follows: 23.7%, 10.1%, 6.5%, and 7.7% in the low EV + low DV, low EV + high DV, high EV + low DV, and high EV + high DV groups, respectively. After adjustment for covariates, only the high EV + high DV group was associated with a significantly lower OR (0.38; 95% CI 0.15–0.92) of frailty incidence compared with the low EV + low DV group.

Higher variety of exercise and diet was significantly associated with lower incidence of frailty. Thus, the combination of variety-rich exercise and dietary program may be useful in preventing the incidence of frailty in older women.