Reliability of a Frailty Index Based on the Clinical Assessment of Health Deficits in Male C57BL/6J Mice.

ABSTRACT: We investigated the reliability of a newly developed clinical frailty index (FI) that measures frailty based on deficit accumulation in aging mice. FI scores were measured by two different raters independently in a large cohort (n = 233) of 343-430 day-old male C57BL/6J mice. Inter-rater reliability was evaluated with correlation coefficients, the kappa statistic, and intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) in three separate groups of mice (n = 45, 50, and 138 mice/group) sequentially over 3 months. After each group was evaluated, descriptions of techniques used to identify health deficits were amended. Mice had comparable overall FI scores regardless of rater (0.213±0.002 vs 0.212±0.002; p = .802), although discordant measures declined as techniques were refined. Correlation coefficien

SUBMITTER: Feridooni HA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4425849 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature