Symptom Clusters and Frailty Among Older Adults With and Without Cancer: Insights From Two Cross-Sectional Studies.
Tianxue Hou, Denise Shuk Ting Cheung, Mu-Hsing Ho and 2 others
PMID 42543491WHAT IT FOUND
In older adults, depressive symptoms were associated with frailty, and sleep disturbance was linked to part of that association.
Pain interfering with daily life was linked to variation in the depression-sleep association in nursing home residents, but not in cancer outpatients.
Key findings
01Depressive symptoms were linked to frailty, and part of that link was through sleep disturbance, in both nursing home residents and older cancer patients.
02In nursing home residents, pain interference rather than pain severity was linked to variation in the association between depressive symptoms and sleep disturbance.
03In older cancer patients, neither pain severity nor pain interference significantly moderated the association between depressive symptoms and sleep disturbance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that depressive symptoms caused sleep disturbance, that sleep disturbance caused frailty, or which symptom came first. Participants reported their own symptoms, and the paper did not include objective sleep or physical performance measures, so self-report may have affected the associations. The analyses did not include medication use, comorbidities, or cancer severity, which could influence depression, sleep, pain, and frailty. The two samples used different frailty, depression, sleep, and pain measures, so the results cannot be compared as if the scores were on the same scale. Participants were recruited by convenience from two sites, so they may not represent older adults in other care settings or regions.
Declared interests
The authors report nothing to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that treating sleep, depression, or pain will reduce frailty. The study measured associations at one time point and did not test any intervention.