Physical frailty likely put people at greater risk of depression: Yale Study

As per the Yale research, those who have any of the five symptoms of physical frailty including weight loss, feelings of weakness, exhaustion, slow walking speed and physical inactivity are at greater risk of developing depression later.

Yale researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a long-term, large-scale study and also gathered extensive health information from more than 500,000 adults in the United Kingdom for their new study. Their research suggested that individuals with physical frailty are at higher risk of also developing depression.

The study also includes insights into the specific inflammatory molecules and changes in brain structure which shows the relation between physical frailty and depression.

Physical frailty is marked by five indicators in clinical settings - slow walking speed, physical inactivity, exhaustion, feelings of weakness, and weight loss. The mentioned condition also puts people at greater risk for other health issues such as hospitalisation, bone fractures, lower quality of life and premature death.

Rongtao Jiang, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Dustin Scheinost in Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging said, "We also found this association was stronger in males and in middle-aged individuals — people younger than 65 — than it was for females or older individuals."

Physical frailty leads to inflammation in brain

The researchers said that while more research is needed to clarify this study but they found strong evidence that frailty and depression are interconnected. As per their study, they found that it is possible for instance that frailty leads to inflammation in the brain and changes in brain structure, which in turn leads to depression.

“Frailty may be a very important risk factor for the development of depression. Depression affects millions of people around the world, but we don’t have very effective treatments or prevention strategies. This significant association between frailty and depression tells us that if we can modify someone’s frailty status, maybe it will have important implications for the prevention of depression," said Jiang.

Certain markers of inflammation — including neutrophils and leukocytes, both of which are white blood cells, and C-reactive protein, made by the liver — mediated the relationship between frailty and depression, said the study.

The researchers grouped participants into three categories based on their initial assessment -

• pre-frail (reporting one or two indicators),
• non-frail (reporting none of the five frailty indicators),
• frail (reporting three or more indicators).

They also assessed how many of the participants had later been diagnosed with depression as reported in their 12-year follow-up.

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