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Research Paper|Volume 17, Issue 4|pp 1011—1025

Examining frailty phenotypes of community-dwelling older adults in Taiwan using the falls risk for older people in the community – Taiwan version (Tw-FROP-Com)

Ya-Mei Tzeng1, Senyeong Kao1, Wun-Sin Chen2, Shueh-Fen Chen3, Shan-Ru Li1, Yu-Lung Chiu1, Yu-Tien Chang1, Yaw-Wen Chang4,5
  • 1School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei City, Taiwan
  • 2Institute and Department of Physiology and Biophysics, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei City, Taiwan
  • 3Department of Senior Citizen Service Business, St. John’s University Taipei Campus, New Taipei City, Taiwan
  • 4Department of Family and Community Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei City, Taiwan
  • 5School of Medicine, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei City, Taiwan
Received: June 15, 2023Accepted: March 13, 2025Published: April 1, 2025
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206231

Copyright: © 2025 Tzeng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Background: Falls are the second leading cause of accidental injury-related deaths among Taiwanese adults aged 65 and older. This study examined the association between Fried frailty phenotypes and fall risk in this population.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Keelung City with 375 participants from an Elderly Fall Prevention Program. Frailty was assessed using the modified Fried criteria: weakness, slowness, exhaustion, low physical activity, and unintentional weight loss. Participants with 0–2 criteria were classified as non-frail, and those with 3 or more as frail. Fall risk was evaluated using the Taiwan version of the Falls Risk for Older People in the Community (Tw-FROP-Com), a 28-item tool scoring 0–60 across 13 risk factors.

Results: Participants had a mean age of 75.4 ± 6.8 years; 76.0% were female, 18.7% were frail, and 32.7% had fallen in the past year. Those with a fall history had higher rates of weakness (56.7%), slowness (49.6%), and frailty (26.1%). Regression analysis showed that weakness (β = 0.64), slowness (β = 0.21), exhaustion (β = 1.28), unintentional weight loss (β = 3.99), and low physical activity (β = 0.88) were significantly associated with increased fall risk. Frailty explained over 50% of fall risk variance, with unintentional weight loss as the strongest predictor.

Conclusion: Unintentional weight loss is the most significant predictor of fall risk among frailty traits. Individual frailty components better predict fall risk than composite frailty measures.