Clinical Characteristics and Frailty of Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment or Dementia Due to Alzheimer's Disease: A Real-World Survey

OBJECTIVES: To describe the clinical characteristics and frailty of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

METHODS: Data were drawn from the Adelphi Real World AD Disease Specific Programme™, a cross-sectional survey of physicians and their patients with MCI/AD in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan between December 2022–March 2024. The frailty index was developed following Theou et al. (Age and Aging, 2023) based on 12 health deficit questions, including current symptoms, activities of daily living requiring assistance, and comorbidities. Frailty was measured on a 0-1 scale, with 1 indicating the highest impairment. Means presented as ± standard deviation.

RESULTS: Overall, 779 physicians reported data on 5551 patients. Mean patient age was 76.5±8.4 years, 51.5% were female, and 37.2% had MCI. Female patients had a mean weight of 65.3±12.6 kg and BMI (body mass index) of 24.9±4.2 kg/m², while male patients had a mean weight of 76.8±12.4 kg and a BMI of 25.6±3.5 kg/m². Within the highest (90^th) and lowest (10^th) frailty percentile, 58.0% and 44.0% of patients were female, respectively. The highest percentile mean frailty score was 0.429±0.070 for females and 0.428±0.077 for males. This was 0.022±0.011 and 0.024±0.011 in the lowest percentile, respectively. Patients in the highest percentile had a mean age of 80.6±7.4 years, a current diagnosis of severe AD (57.3%), and comorbidities including hypertension (52.0%), anxiety (32.3%), and depression (35.0%). Patients in the lowest percentile had a mean age of 72.8±9.3 years, a current diagnosis of MCI (65.5%), and comorbidities including hypertension (9.2%), anxiety (14.7%) and depression (9.9%).

CONCLUSIONS: These data provided valuable insights into the health and vulnerability of elderly patients. Further analysis is needed to understand the relative impact of specific comorbidities and measures of AD severity on the frailty score.