Evidence from two cohorts for the frailty syndrome as an emergent state of parallel dysregulation in multiple physiological systems.

ABSTRACT: Frailty is a clinical syndrome often present in older adults and characterized by a heightened vulnerability to stressors. The biological antecedents and etiology of frailty are unclear despite decades of research: frailty is associated with dysregulation in a wide range of physiological systems, but no specific cause has been identified. Here, we test predictions stemming from the hypothesis that there is no specific cause: that frailty is an emergent property arising from the complex systems dynamics of the broad loss of organismal homeostasis. Specifically, we use dysregulation of six physiological systems using the Mahalanobis distance approach in two cohorts of older adults to test the breadth, diffuseness, and nonlinearity of associations between frailty and system-specific dysregula

SUBMITTER: Ghachem A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8557952 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature