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Researchers studied people age 60 or older in the UK who had not yet
developed so-called frailty, a term that describes a lack of
robustness and physical reserves that leaves a person more
vulnerable to disability when they become ill or experience an
injury like a fall.
After four years of follow-up, smokers were 60 percent more likely
to become frail than participants who didn’t smoke.
“Those who quit smoking in the past did not have the same increased
risk of frailty, which suggests that stopping smoking is likely to
have benefits even if late in life,” said study leader Dr. Gotaro
Kojima of University College London.
“It could potentially decrease the risk of becoming frail,” Kojima
said by email.
While frailty is associated with aging, it’s not inevitable.
Symptoms can include weight loss, fatigue, slow walking speed, low
levels of physical activity, and reduced muscle mass. Frail elders
are at higher risk for falls, fractures, hospitalizations and
cognitive decline.
To see if smoking might influence the risk of frailty, researchers
analyzed data from a nationally representative UK survey of 2,542
older adults.
At the start of the study, 56 percent of participants were
considered “robust” because they reported no signs of frailty. The
rest had one or two symptoms of frailty but not enough to be
classified as frail.
Overall, 1,113 participants were former smokers and another 261
people currently smoked.
Current smokers had an increased risk of frailty even after
researchers accounted for other factors that can play a role such as
age, gender, alcohol use, education, income and cognitive function.
Past smokers, however, didn’t appear to have an increased risk of
frailty. There also wasn’t a difference in frailty risk based on
whether ex-smokers had quit at least a decade earlier or more
recently, researchers report in Age and Ageing.
The picture looked different, however, when researchers examined
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a common complication
of smoking that makes it difficult to breathe. COPD is linked with
an increased risk of balance difficulties, muscle weakness, thinning
bones, blackouts and falls.
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When researchers accounted for COPD, current smoking no longer
appeared to influence the risk of frailty. This suggests that
smokers are more apt to become frail because of COPD rather than
from smoking itself, the authors conclude.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how smoking causes frailty.
Another limitation is that researchers lacked data on how much
people smoked. In addition, participants who dropped out of the
study over time tended to be frailer and sicker than those who
remained and were included in the final analysis.
Even so, the findings should offer smokers yet another reason to
quit, said Dr. Teemu Niiranen, a researcher with Boston University’s
Framingham Heart Study.
“In addition to causing cancer, smoking can damage the heart, lungs,
blood vessels, mouth, reproductive organs, bones, skin and eyes,”
Niiranen, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
“Dysfunction in all of these organ systems predisposes to frailty at
old age.”
Quitting can’t reverse or prevent all of the health problems
associated with a lifetime of smoking, noted Dr. Christian Delles of
the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the
University of Glasgow in the UK.
But the study does suggest smoking cessation may make a difference
when it comes to frailty, Delles, who wasn’t involved in the study,
said by email.
“(Ex-smokers’) risk of frailty was as low as that of people who had
never smoked,” Delles said. “It is never too late to quit.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2isaY3Q Age and Ageing, online August 17,
2017.
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