Sleep Quality and Frailty Association in the Elderly

Objective: To analyze the association between sleep quality and frailty syndrome in the elderly who are attending a general hospital. Methods: Cross-sectional analytical study conducted at the General Hospital of the Zone No. 27 of the Mexican Institute of Social Security from November 2022 to April 2023, in Mexico City, Mexico; 170 adults ≥ 60 years of age attending geriatric consultation participated, non-probability sampling was used. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality and frail for frailty questionnaires were used; to exclude other factors that could influence the development of frailty, the Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Mini Nutritional Assessment were used. Descriptive statistics, X2 test to evaluate significant differences between groups, prevalence ratio (pr) to evaluate the likelihood of frailty with poor sleep quality, and binary linear regression to explore the influence of other variables on frailty were performed. Results: The mean age was 79.6 ± 8 years, women represented 71.2% (n= 121) of the sample. It was reported that 48.2% (n= 82) of the patients showed frailty, and 68.8% (n= 117) poor sleep quality, regarding the evaluation of confounding variables, 55.8% (n=95) showed depression, and 3.5% (n= 6) malnutrition. An association was found between sleep quality and frailty (p < 0.001), the pr for frailty was 14.52 (ci 5.72-36.83). The linear regression model for sleep quality was 10.33 (95% ci: 3.92-27.25), and for depression 2.34 (95% ci: 1.10-4.94). Conclusion: an association was found between poor sleep quality and frailty, with a 14.52-fold increase in the probability of presenting frailty in those with poor sleep quality.