An Association between Lower Extremity Function and Cognitive Frailty: A Sample Population from the KFACS Study

The present study aimed to define the physical function and lipid profile for physical and cognitive frailty in community-dwelling Korean older adults. A total of 229 participants (age = 76.76 ± 3.72 years; body mass index = 24.83 ± 3.15) were classified into four groups: robust, pre-frailty, cognitive decline, and cognitive frailty. An analysis on the four groups was performed to measure their physical and cognitive function, as well as blood biomarkers. The area under (AUC) the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) indicated that the 6-min Walk Test (6MWT), Timed Up and Go test (TUG), and Five Times Sit-to-Stand test (FTSS) had the potential to distinguish the capacity of an old adult to predict cognitive frailty. The 6MWT had a higher sensitivity and the TUG and FTSS tests had greater specificity. With cognitive frailty as a categorical variable, cognitive frailty status was a significant predictor of the TUG (odds ratio (OR) 2.897; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.283–6.541), FTSS (OR 3.337; 95% CI 1.451–7.673), and 6MWT (OR 0.204; 95% CI 0.070–0.591) tests. Our findings indicate that the 6MWT, TUG, and FTSS tests are closely related to cognitive frailty and can provide potential prognostic cutoff points.