The FRAILOMIC initiative is a large scale research project aiming to identify the factors that turn frailty into disability.
The anticipated rise in the number of older people this century will inevitably be accompanied by an increase in the number of people with disabilities. Frailty, which comprises changes associated with ageing and chronic disease, usually precedes disability. Detecting frailty and intervening before it becomes disabling is more and more necessary as the population ages. Testing the clinical utility of the existing definition of frailty using a combination of clinical and laboratory biomarkers is pivotal.
The FRAILOMIC initiative is designed to use biomarkers to determine the factors that turn frailty into disability. The main objective is to develop clinical instruments to predict the risk of frailty, improve the diagnostic accuracy of frailty in day-to-day practice, and to assess the prognosis of frailty in terms of disability and other adverse outcomes.
Levels of blood and urine biomarkers will be measured in approximately 75,000 participants. These laboratory biomarkers will be combined with clinical biomarkers obtained from the same cohort to develop predictive, diagnostic and prognostic models in both the older general population and those people with attributes that confer a higher risk of frailty (e.g., cardiovascular risk factors). A selected set of biomarkers will be validated prospectively and assessed to find best fit models, which will guide the development of ready-to-use kits to be used in the clinical setting.
The international FRAILOMIC consortium comprises seven small- and medium-sized enterprises, six universities, two leading research centres, four hospital-based research groups and the World Health Organization. The project is co-ordinated by Professor Leocadio Rodriguez-Mañas (Hospital Universitario de Getafe, Madrid, Spain), an internationally renowned geriatrician and Director of the Spanish Network on Ageing and Frailty (RETICEF) of the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Site last updated 15 February 2017
Detecting frailty and intervening before it becomes disabling is more and more necessary as the population ages
