Black label
The degree of fatigue was called a marker of imminent death
Maria Azarova, Naked Science
According to the degree of fatigue that older people face when performing certain activities, it is possible to calculate the probability of death in less than three years from all causes, said scientists from the Department of Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, Columbia State University in Georgia, as well as genetics from the University of Washington in Missouri (USA). The results of the study are published in the publication The Journals of Gerontology (Glynn et al., Perceived Physical Fatigability Predicts All-Cause Mortality in Older Adults).
From 22.5% to 89.5% of older people complain of increased physical fatigue, and over time women suffer from it more often than men. According to general fatigue, including mental fatigue, deterioration of physical and cognitive functions is predicted, and the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and depression is associated with it. At the same time, this sign, according to experts, can be clinically useful, since it reflects what a person is able to do, what his capabilities are, the level of physical fitness and how much effort will be required for standard actions.
The authors of the new work analyzed data from more than 2.2 thousand people aged 60 and older (average age — 73.5 years, 54.2% — women, 99.7% — white), who were members of several hundred families, representatives of two generations and participated in the Long Life Family Study — an international study of life expectancy. According to the Pittsburgh Fatigue Scale, they assessed how tired they felt, for example, during a leisurely half-hour walk in the park, a brisk walk for an hour, housework or gardening, watching TV for two hours, 30-minute workouts of varying degrees of intensity, holding a social event, and so on. Zero points meant "no fatigue", five — "the highest degree of fatigue".
The estimates were summarized and compared, taking into account many other factors such as medication intake, the presence of diseases, blood pressure, bad habits, and so on. The authors of the study then constructed Kaplan-Meyer survival curves to calculate the time to death depending on the degree of fatigue.
"Our work has established for the first time that perceived physical fatigue serves as a reliable independent indicator of mortality in the elderly. We found that the most severe physical fatigue (≥ 25 points) is associated with a 2.3—fold increased risk of death during 2.7 years of observation compared with a lower degree of fatigue (<25 points)," the scientists write. The correlation persisted even after adjusting for age and gender — two important predictors of mortality.
According to the researchers, over the past decade, fatigue has become a key marker of phenotypic aging, but no work has previously assessed whether it is possible to predict mortality from any cause by this indicator. The scientists plan to develop methods aimed at reducing the degree of physical fatigue in order to prevent violations of physical functions in the aging process and improve the well—being of patients.
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