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Review
. 2021 Jul 9;13(7):2349.
doi: 10.3390/nu13072349.

Nutrition and Frailty: Opportunities for Prevention and Treatment

Mary Ni Lochlainn  1 , Natalie J Cox  2   3 , Thomas Wilson  4 , Richard P G Hayhoe  5   6 , Sheena E Ramsay  7 , Antoneta Granic  8   9 , Masoud Isanejad  10 , Helen C Roberts  2   3 , Daisy Wilson  11 , Carly Welch  11   12 , Christopher Hurst  8   9 , Janice L Atkins  13 , Nuno Mendonça  7   14   15 , Katy Horner  16 , Esme R Tuttiett  17 , Yvie Morgan  18 , Phil Heslop  8 , Elizabeth A Williams  17 , Claire J Steves  1 , Carolyn Greig  12   19 , John Draper  4 , Clare A Corish  16 , Ailsa Welch  5 , Miles D Witham  8   9 , Avan A Sayer  8   9 , Sian Robinson  8   9
Affiliations
Review

Nutrition and Frailty: Opportunities for Prevention and Treatment

Mary Ni Lochlainn et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Frailty is a syndrome of growing importance given the global ageing population. While frailty is a multifactorial process, poor nutritional status is considered a key contributor to its pathophysiology. As nutrition is a modifiable risk factor for frailty, strategies to prevent and treat frailty should consider dietary change. Observational evidence linking nutrition with frailty appears most robust for dietary quality: for example, dietary patterns such as the Mediterranean diet appear to be protective. In addition, research on specific foods, such as a higher consumption of fruit and vegetables and lower consumption of ultra-processed foods are consistent, with healthier profiles linked to lower frailty risk. Few dietary intervention studies have been conducted to date, although a growing number of trials that combine supplementation with exercise training suggest a multi-domain approach may be more effective. This review is based on an interdisciplinary workshop, held in November 2020, and synthesises current understanding of dietary influences on frailty, focusing on opportunities for prevention and treatment. Longer term prospective studies and well-designed trials are needed to determine the causal effects of nutrition on frailty risk and progression and how dietary change can be used to prevent and/or treat frailty in the future.

Keywords: ageing; appetite; frailty; inflammation; metabolome; microbiome.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Components of Frailty * Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of skeletal muscle, quantified by objective measures of muscle strength, mass and function [6].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic representation of the pathophysiology of frailty. Reproduced from [4]. Copyright permission has been obtained from [4].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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